


your head caught in a waking dream

by addandsubtract



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which charles is sent to a mental institution as a child and by the time raven breaks him out, he's irreparably damaged. because this is me, there's also a road trip involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your head caught in a waking dream

**Author's Note:**

> written for [this](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/397.html?thread=331149#t331149) kinkmeme prompt!

Charles meets Raven two weeks shy of his twelfth birthday. She looks like his mother, but she’s not. He knows that she’s not.

“Who are you?” he asks, and his voice doesn’t quaver or tremble. “You’re not my mother.”

“Don’t tell, please,” she says, in a child’s voice, and shifts in front of him, like magic, into a small girl, blue and scaled, yellow eyes boring into him. Her lower lip trembles, but she doesn’t cry.

“Who are you?” he asks again. She is naked and skinny, her ribs showing through her tough skin, and he doesn’t want her to be frightened.

“Raven,” she says. “I was just – I’m so hungry. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” he promises. “I won’t tell anyone.”

 

Charles doesn’t know where Raven stays, but she’s always around. When his parents are out of the house, or have friends over for dinner, or are listening to the news in the downstairs study, Raven sneaks in and keeps him company while he finishes his homework. He learns to keep snacks in his room for her and tries to explain what he’s studying – Latin and algebra and spelling – but he’s not very good at it.

“You have to divide on both sides, I think,” he says, pointing at the paper with his pencil. She just shakes her head at him.

“I don’t care, Charles. Can we play chess, instead?” She’s sitting cross-legged next to him on the bed, wearing one of his old sweaters and a pair of navy-colored trousers that he outgrew over the summer. They’re still too long on her and catch on her heels when she walks. He still hasn’t solved her shoe problem – she’s much too tiny to wear any of his.

“All right,” he says, because he’d rather play chess with her than do his homework anyway.

 

The voices start that winter, and for a while, Charles doesn’t think much of it. Sometimes Raven will look at him and she won’t even have to speak. He’ll hear her, as clear as day, saying, _Would you please stop reading that book and pay attention to me?_ or _How can you stand to listen to this rubbish all day?_ or even just, _I’m so hungry I could eat a horse_.

It’s February when he realizes how much more talking he does.

“Why don’t you talk anymore?” he asks. They’re sitting at the dining room table, Charles in the seat at the head that his father usually occupies, and Raven just to his left, where Charles would otherwise sit. He’s doing his math homework and she’s drawing a castle on the back of his English assignment. Hopefully no one will notice. His parents are at some kind of charity gala. Charles doesn’t pay much attention anymore, honestly.

“I don’t have to, with you.” She shrugs, and goes to back to her drawing. “You always know what I’m going to say before I say it.”

Charles wonders about that for a moment, but she’s thinking, _You know I’m telling the truth, can’t you tell?_ and he supposes that he can.

 

Going to school gets harder and harder for Charles. His parents don’t realize quite how much until the first time he comes home with a black eye.

“Charles!” His mother sounds scandalized, and Charles looks at his neatly tied shoes and wishes that Raven were here.

“I didn’t –” he starts, and then snaps his mouth closed. He’d almost said, _I didn’t mean to say what James was thinking_ , but he can’t, because then his mother will ask what he means, and – and. He’ll have to tell her. She’s his mother and she can always tell when he’s lying.

“Your father left your mother?” Charles had blurted out in the middle of class, like some kind of freak, because James had been wondering what was going to happen to him now that his father had left his mother, and for his secretary, too. James’ face had gone stormy and red and he’d punched Charles before anyone could stop him.

 

Charles spends most of the next two months with headaches. He doesn’t want to know what anyone is thinking, especially not about _him_ , and when he tells Raven she just shrugs.

“I’d rather that than look like this,” she says, and holds up one blue hand for him to see.

“I’d trade,” Charles says, unhappily, and pushes his face into his pillow. James hasn’t stopped wanting to kill him since Charles said that thing about his parents. The other boys all think he’s some kind of freak and give him a wide berth, but he can still hear all the things that they’re thinking about him. _Queer_ , and _I bet he’s some kind of pervert_ , and _no way am I ever – don’t leave me alone with him,_ and _demon-worshiper, I bet –_

“At least you like me,” Charles says, words still muffled in his pillow.

 _I’ll always like you,_ Raven thinks at him, matter-of-factly. _You’re my best friend_.

“You, too,” Charles says.

 

It all goes south in May, less than a month before the end of the school year, when Charles stands up so suddenly that he pushes his chair over. The clatter of it against the wooden floor startles the whole room into silence. Even Mr. Moorcock, their stone-faced math instructor, stops lecturing.

“Would you all stop thinking such horrible things,” Charles says, voice louder than he means it to be. “Just – just _shut up_.”

The room is silent, but they’re all still shouting at him, gibbering in fear and hateful with it. It’s too loud, too much, and it’s all targeted right at him.

Charles presses his head into his hands, trying to push back against the thoughts that aren’t his, the _crazy – insane bastard I can’t believe – freak, freak – what a fucking – god look at his face look at it – he must be crazy_ , but he can’t.

He can’t hold it back when he starts to cry.

 

His mother is silent in the car on the ride home, but that doesn’t mean Charles can’t hear her.

 _What did I do to deserve this?_ she thinks. Charles’ parents aren’t religious – he goes to mass twice a year, on Christmas and on Easter – so when his mother starts to pray, quietly, in her own head, he presses his face to the glass of the passenger side window and watches the scrub-brush pass on the side of the road, pretending not to hear her.

 

Charles doesn’t see Raven before the doctor comes. He doesn’t get to see the doctor, either, but he can hear the murmur of their voices, and more importantly, he can hear all the things his father and mother are thinking.

The doctor’s mind is full of empty hallways and locked doors, the faint smell of blood and the sound of muffled screaming. Pills in tiny paper cups. Wild-eyed children shaking as the electricity runs through them. Piss and vomit and syringes lined up in neat little rows.

Charles curls up on top of his covers and doesn’t even try to sleep.

They’ll be coming for him in the morning. His parents aren’t going to tell him, but he already knows. He pulls out a piece of notebook paper and starts to scribble in pencil.

 

He leaves the note for Raven between the back of his dresser and the wall. She’ll find it, he knows, if she ever comes back. She already knows all of his hiding places.

>   
> 
> 
> _Raven,_
> 
> _My parents are committing me. They think I’m crazy. You know I’m not, but they’ll never believe me. I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye. You’re my only friend, and I love you. Please don’t forget me._
> 
> _Love, Charles_

 

The orderlies are wearing white when they take him away in the morning. They stuff him in the back of a black car, both of them climbing into the back seat with him, as if he’s going to try to run away. The doctor is driving, but Charles pretends that he doesn’t recognize him, or understand where they’re going.

His mother is crying when she waves goodbye. She says that they’ll visit him, voice tearful and thin. His father is stoically silent. Charles doesn’t say anything at all.

 

The boy they room Charles with spends all night talking to himself. He paces back and forth by the ends of their beds, and tugs at his hair with one fisted hand. Charles lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, trying to reconcile the words actually coming out of the boy’s mouth with the ones that he can hear in his head. Charles wonders who the boy is talking to.

Eventually the slide-drag of the boy’s footsteps lulls Charles to sleep, if only for a few hours.

 

He’s shown into the doctor’s office early the next morning. The orderlies don’t tell him anything, but he can feel how detached they are. To them, he’s just another faceless kid, troubled and crazy and not worth wasting time on. He tries to push off the _wonder how long this one is going to last_ and the _two hours until my shift is over_ , but it gets underneath his skin like sandpaper. No one here really cares if he gets better.

He sits in the chair in the doctor’s office. It’s made of hard plastic, immediately uncomfortable.

“Well,” the doctor starts, and flips open the chart, reminding himself of Charles’s name and why he’s here, “Mr. Xavier. Why don’t you tell me why you think you’re with us?”

Charles fists his hands in his lap and sits in sullen silence.

“I know you must be frightened, but the more we understand about your – condition – the easier it will be to cure you of it.” The doctor is aiming for kind, but his tone is like lacquer, shining up something dull.

“You think I’m mad,” Charles says, eventually. “That I hear voices.”

“And do you?” The doctor leans forward in his chair, and Charles stares down at his own shoes.

“No,” Charles says, stubborn. “I hear other people’s thoughts.”

“Ah,” the doctor says. “The root of the problem. Delusions. You see, Mr. Xavier, that is impossible.”

“But –” Charles starts, wanting to say, _You’re thinking about your lunch, the one you keep in the desk drawer. You’re wondering if your wife put enough mayonnaise in the tuna salad_ , but the doctor cuts him off with a look.

“Mr. Xavier, you’re not going to get better unless you listen to what I have to say. You won’t get better unless you try very, very hard. Can you do that for me?”

Charles wants to scream; he wants to launch himself across the desk and gouge out the doctor’s eyes with his fingers. He wants to stop being condescended to. Instead, he nods.

 

He takes a pill with every meal, and they let him socialize with the other children for several hours each day. He can hear their thoughts tremble through them, chaotic and uncertain – _I won’t I won’t I won’t – once father takes me away from here they’ll see they’ll – half the day away and you can’t make me – crazy I’m not I’ll prove it_ – they’re more fragile than he’s used to, like a butterfly’s wings. Easily tattered.

There’s no Raven to play chess with, and the fragmented thoughts make his head pound. He watches one of the boys pull out his hair, while another stares at the table, palms flat against the surface.

For a moment he can see the companion one of the girls is convinced follows her every move – he can see the bright hair and pale skin, the wide, red mouth. He shakes his head to dislodge the image, and looks up to one of the orderlies watching him.

 

His parents visit him a few weeks in, and Charles feels like his head has been stuffed with cotton. He’s not sure how much time has actually passed. One of the orderlies leads him into the visitors’ room, which is mostly empty save for the table in the center of the room, two sets of chairs on either side.

He’s having a hard time connecting point a to point b, like his brain is filled with sludge. His mother asks him how he’s doing, and he shrugs, noncommittal. His roommate still paces at night, muttering, and last night someone down the hall screamed for an hour and a half. They’d sedated her, eventually.

“How’s Raven?” he asks. His mother’s face crumples into confusion, and his father’s mouth tenses like he’s holding in a scolding. It reminds him that they don’t know about her. He’s not supposed to tell anyone.

“Who?” his mother asks, eventually, her voice gentle. She’s leaning forward, putting her hand on top of his. Her hands are warm and soft and Charles watches his fingers curl against the tabletop. He tries to find comfort in her, but he can’t.

“Never mind,” he says. “Nothing.”

 

Charles empties the saltshaker out onto the table in the cafeteria and spreads the salt underneath his fingers. He tries to remember the quadratic equation, but he can’t. He tries to remember the exact specifications of Raven’s face, but he can’t – just the texture of her skin, and the intensity of her eyes. The way her thoughts would run over him like cool water, not like the ragged edges here, the razor sharp anxiety and fear, dull pain, confusion like a bitter pill.

The grains of salt get caught underneath Charles’ fingernails, and he wonders if he’s past his thirteenth birthday yet.

The doctor says that the treatments aren’t working. He starts electroshock therapy in the morning.

 

They strap him down, ankles and wrists and torso, and push a piece of flat plastic into his mouth. So he doesn’t bite his tongue.

“You’ll feel better in a jiffy,” the doctor says, falsely cheerful, and Charles tries to shake his head, shake out the way the doctors words contradict his thoughts – _this one might be hopeless – hopeless – non-violent at least – hopeless_ – but one of the orderlies puts a hand on his head to still him.

They brush his hair out off of his forehead, and push the electrodes against his skin.

They don’t warn him before they turn on the machine.

 

The voices scream at him, louder and louder, as he convulses on the table. He can barely understand and feel and think past the sharp curling electricity and the twin thoughts, twined so close together that he can’t untangle them, one murmuring, _shhh darling you’re all right it’s all right_ , and the other yelling at him, _SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP_.

 

He wakes up in his bed. At least, he assumes it’s his bed, but he can’t quite remember. Everything is foggy, and all of his muscles hurt. The bed across the room is empty, and Charles vaguely remembers the boy who sleeps there, but not his name, and not his face. It’s like someone cut into his head with a scalpel and sliced out all the details, leaving him with cardboard cutouts, faceless holes where all the features used to be.

He thinks, _Raven_ , but he can’t quite remember her, just blue toes sticking out of the bottom of navy blue pants, but that can’t be right. Yellow eyes. A musical laugh.

He lies in bed and tries to slot all the pieces back together, but they don’t fit quite right anymore. He counts his fingers and his toes. He dozes off.

Sometime later, an orderly comes in with a sandwich, a cup of water, and a pill on a tray. She helps him sit up, and he does his best to eat. She watches to make sure that he swallows his pill.

Words – _oh you poor boy poor thing_ – come from somewhere, but Charles can’t identify their source, so he ignores them.

 

He plays chess with himself in the common room, but he can’t remember all the rules, anymore, so he makes them up. One of the girls watches him until it makes her angry and she swipes all the pieces off the board onto the floor.

_– goddamn it damn everything you little shits how dare you – the water will come down all around us and – stop it stop it stop it –_

Charles pushes his fingertips into his temple, and bends down to pick up the pieces.

 

The doctor shakes his head, and orders for more electroshock sessions.

 

He dreams that he’s sitting in a classroom, an empty classroom, and there’s a woman standing at the chalkboard. She has blue skin, scaled in a perfect pattern, but her voice sounds like his mother’s. He’s trying to copy down everything she’s saying, but she’s talking too fast, and he can’t understand all of the words.

 _You’re too slow,_ comes from nowhere in particular and he realizes that she’s staring at him, eyes wide and angry and he tries to speak but no words come out.

 _Wake up,_ she says, without moving her mouth. _Wake up wake up wake up_.

 

“Charles!”

The hissed words are enough to wake Charles, and he recognizes that voice, but he can’t place it. He sits up, ignoring the groans from his stiff muscles. It’s dark through the barred window, and there’s someone at the door.

“Yes?”

“Shh,” the voice shushes him. “Come here, and don’t wake your roommate.”

The words are a whisper in the dark, and Charles’s heart is pounding, but he knows that voice, he does. He slips out of bed and pads, barefoot, to the door of his room.

One of the orderlies is standing in the hallway, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. It’s the same one who brings him his pills and meals after the electroshock sessions. He can never quite remember her name.

The voices have shifted – the words that appear in the air and that no one else can hear. The ones that the doctor is trying to get rid of. There’s no, _Poor boy there you go so calm so sweet_. Instead it’s, _Charles, Charles, what have they done what have they I’ll kill them I’ll kill every one of them,_ with an anger so fierce that it makes Charles whimper and push his hands against his temples.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, and then, “Charles, it’s me. It’s Raven.”

The sound of that name on her lips, the name that Charles holds close to his heart, even if he’s not sure what it means anymore, makes Charles jolt and look at her.

“No, that’s impossible,” he says. “Raven?”

“I’m going to get you out,” she says, “somehow. I promise.”

Charles shakes his head, uncomprehending, and the voice whispers, _Oh, Charles, what have they done to you?_ so sad and quiet that it makes his heart ache. When she hugs him he doesn’t pull away.

 

In the morning the orderly comes back, with his tray and his pill, and Charles obediently eats and swallows his pill. He watches her back when she turns to leave.

“Raven?” he asks, quietly, into the still room. She turns to look at him, confused, and then shakes her head.

 

Time moves in stutters and stops. Charles has a hard time keeping track of it all. He takes his pills. He sleeps. He tries to read, but the letters all scramble together and burst apart. He lets them strap him to the table and pump him full of electricity.

And through it all, he still hears the voices.

 

His parents visit, he’s lost count of how many times, and his mother cries when she wishes him a happy birthday, and says that she’s sorry they missed it. He hadn’t even noticed. He pulls his eyes away from the ceiling and blinks at her.

“How old am I?” he asks, voice cautious, rusty. He doesn’t speak, much.

“Oh, Charles,” she says, and covers her face with one hand. _How did he get like this I can’t take much more of it_ , whisper the voices.

“Fifteen,” his father says, voice firm like marble. “You’re fifteen.”

 

“Don’t,” he starts, but he cuts himself off. The doctor is sitting patiently with his hands folded on top of his notebook.

“Now, Mr. Xavier. It’s not such a difficult question, is it? And yet, you’ve long refused to answer it. Who is Raven? Who do you think she is?”

“Don’t ask me about her,” Charles pleads, trying to ignore the way his stomach swoops at the sound of her name, her face a hazy slate, indistinct in his memory. He’s not even sure, anymore, if she’s real.

“We can’t help you if we don’t have all the information you can give us, you know that. You’re only hurting yourself.” The doctor’s face is sympathetic in a way that makes Charles’s skin crawl, and the words that trawl across his skin – _still delusional still we may have to increase the voltage again or maybe_ – make him shudder.

“Stop,” he says, though he’s not sure precisely who he’s talking to. “She’s my best friend.”

“Hmm,” the doctor says, and makes a note on his pad.

 

Charles’s roommate leaves, or is released, Charles isn’t sure, and he’s never assigned a new one. He sleeps more, but it’s so quiet at night that he tosses and turns. He doesn’t remember his dreams, just that he wakes up filled with dread.

When the hair on his face starts to grow in, they teach him to shave and let him hold the razor himself, though only as long as one of the orderlies is watching. The soft scratch of the blade over his skin is soothing, and he lets himself get lost in it.

The voices don’t leave, or even change volume – _still no sign of violence – don’t have any choice – take your pills take them_ – but when no one else is talking to him, he doesn’t much care.

 

The orderlies push him into the visitors’ room, and it’s just his mother sitting in the chair across the table. She’s smiling, and she’s not crying. Something is wrong, something is – _Charles can you still tell Charles it’s me_ – and Charles sits only to keep from collapsing. They’re screaming at him, the voices, like there’s something he’s forgetting.

He asks, “Who are you?” so quietly that they won’t hear him through the door. He’s wrong, he’s wrong again.

But she just laughs, like she’s overjoyed. “You still know! Oh, Charles, it’s been so long –”

“No, I.” He shakes his head. “I haven’t. Mother always cries, and you –” He’s confused himself, so he stops talking.

“I met a boy,” she says, and then stops, considering. “A man, really. He’s like –” _like us,_ the voice whispers, as though continuing the same sentence, and Charles sways in his seat, puts a hand over his eyes. He sees a startlingly vivid picture behind his eyelids – a sharply smiling mouth and slicked back hair, a square jaw. No one he knows, and Charles holds in a sob because he’s never leaving, they’re never going to let him leave.

“You have to be strong, Charles,” she says, and when he peeks at her through his fingers she has her bottom lip pulled into her mouth. She reaches for his hand. He swears that her skin turns blue for a second, just a flash, but he’s hallucinating again. Imagining it. “Erik will help, I know it. You’ll be – you’ll be fine.”

An _I love you_ whispers out of nowhere and Charles is overwhelmed with a grief that can’t possibly be completely his, except that it must be. He doesn’t know why his eyes are wet. He doesn’t know what there is to be sad about. He doesn’t look back when the orderly leads him away.

 

He’s taller now, though he only notices about half the time. He’s broader. His arms and legs are pale, and there’s a spray of freckles across his hips, and his eyes are blue, dark-circled. He only ever sees his face when they hand him the razor he uses to shave. The female orderlies sometimes give him this look, side-along eyes – _growing up handsome this one it’s a pity it’s a pity he’s so crazy – crazy_ – that search him up and down and Charles doesn’t like it.

Their fingers brush his shoulders, soft, as they tug him down the hallway to the electroshock chamber, and he wants to shake them off, but he knows, by now, that they’re never going to let him leave. He’s going to be here until he dies, and at least they touch him at all.

 

Charles watches the news on the television with the volume muted. He makes up the stories he doesn’t understand, closing his eyes during the commercials to try to mute the screams and whimpers and imaginary cursing that filters in from all around him. It’s worse in the common area, but they won’t let him stay in his room.

He wants to yell, tell them all to shut up, to leave him alone, but he knows it won’t help.

 

Charles dreams that he’s back in his parents’ house, even though he can’t quite recall what it looked like. He’s wandering through the hallways, and he’s searching for someone, though he’s not sure whom, and he can’t remember, and someone is crying softly, but the sound of it never gets louder, no matter how many rooms he goes through. In the kitchen someone has dropped a glass of milk on the floor and left it – shattered glass and drying liquid on the tiles.

“Hello?” he calls. “Are you there?” He doesn’t know whom he expects to answer, and no one does.

Voices whisper at him out of the darkness, but he can’t understand them, and he stumbles into the kitchen, the shards of glass biting into the soles of his feet. He trip and falls and the glass slides into his hands, and he screams. He screams and screams and no one is listening to him.

 

He wakes up screaming, and realizes that he’s not the only one. The whole ward is echoing with it, and Charles covers his ears and curls up on his side, willing it away, all of it.

 _sedate them sedate them all under control we’ve got it_ , slides into his head out of the darkness, and the voices sputter out, one by one, like candles in the wind.

When they come to get him he’s biting his lip, trying not to make any noise as the voices leave him, one at a time.

 

He swims in and out of focus, coming to and then swiftly sliding under again. Some part of him realizes that they’re keeping him sedated, but he can’t muster the energy to care. Everything is quiet, for the first time in so staggeringly long he can barely remember it. Even his own head.

 

It isn’t the noises that wake him, though he hears them when he starts to surface, groggy and weak. It isn’t the screech of metal against metal or the crash of large objects colliding.

It’s the screaming that wakes him. The fear. The pain. There’s enough of it soaring through his veins to flood his system with adrenaline, start his heart pounding.

There is something huge and angry moving toward him, and Charles tries to push away the voices screaming at him to stop, to make it go away, but he can’t, and he’s not sure he cares. The pain and the fear and the anger are all his, and none of it is real.  
Nothing matters because none of it is real.

He’s staring at the far wall when the door bangs open, hitting the white plaster with a thud and a crack. Charles is clenching and unclenching his right hand, over and over, watching the way the IV threaded into his arm bobs with the movement of his muscles. His vision swims when he moves his head. The doorway is empty.

 _wake up sleeping beauty_ drifts down the hallway, laced with residual anger and something gentler. Charles can still feel the pain and fear balled up inside his chest, but he’s somehow detached from it, like it isn’t quite his.

What comes through the door isn’t what he would have expected, had he even thought to. The man is tall and sharp, like a weapon. Charles recognizes him, but he’s not sure why – something about the wide set of his mouth and the slick of his hair. Charles blinks at him with drugged slowness.

“You’re awake,” the man says, quietly, and Charles watches him take a step closer. _And a looker, too_ – the words curl up out of nowhere, like cold breath on a winter’s day. Charles thinks that maybe he should be frightened of this strange, familiar man, but he isn’t.

“Raven!” The man shouts, and Charles jolts, some half-remembered affection swooping through him, twin impulses of _safe_ and _not real_. He moves to push his fingers against his temple, but the IV stops him, and he wavers, stuck between two actions.

The man takes an abortive step closer, and then a girl pushes through the doorway, past him. She crouches at his bedside, and touches his wrist where the IV pushes underneath his skin.

 _Charles,_ he hears, and she kisses the back of his hand, but he doesn’t recognize her at all. Not her blonde hair, nor her pointed chin, nor her pursed mouth. She can’t be older than sixteen. _It’s me it’s Raven I’ll show you I told you I’d come back I told you I’d get you_.

She has tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. The words sound familiar, like someone he used to know, but he just shakes his head.

“No, no,” he says, voice hoarse with disuse. “You’re not real. They told me you weren’t.” He squeezes his eyes closed but when he opens them again, she’s still there, with her tearstained face and determined jaw.

“Erik,” she says. She looks over her shoulder, and the man is watching them.

He looks back and forth between them. “Fuck,” he says. “Yeah. Pull out the IV. I’ll carry him.”

 

The hallway is full of shattered glass and opened doors, some of them creaking, half off their hinges. There is no one – no patients, no orderlies, no doctors. Charles realizes, vaguely, that the screaming has stopped. The only words now are half murmured endearments, and the steady repetition of his name. Charles pushes his ear closer to the man’s, Erik’s, chest, and listens to the wet thump of his heart beating in steady rhythm.

Charles is relatively certain that he’s still drugged and dreaming, but he doesn’t think that it could be any worse than the hospital.

 

Erik slides him into the back seat of a car, closing the door gently. Charles watches the road out the window and tries not to fall asleep, but he can’t quite manage it.

 

When Charles wakes up again, he’s still not in the hospital. Instead he’s in some kind of attic room, with a sloped ceiling, and a window set high into the wall. White lacy curtains are pulled back from the glass, and Charles likes this dream better than reality. He lies still, staring at the wall and cataloguing the weight of the quilt settled over him, the lumpiness of the mattress.

– _his breaths are shorter – pale skin the dip of his back – he’s stopped shifting waking up finally_ –

The voices starts to trickle back in as soon as he opens his eyes. Even in his fantasies he can’t escape them.

“Welcome back.” The speaker’s voice is deep and rich, smoky like burning coal.

Charles turns over and the man – Erik, his mind supplies, and he’s surprised that he remembers – is sitting with one leg crossed over the other, in a dark wood chair next to a dark wood dresser. He’s close enough to touch, should Charles want to sit up and lean forward. Charles watches him breathe and tries to identify why he looks so familiar, but he can’t.

“Why do I know your face?” Charles’s voice sounds jagged, like teeth, and he swallows.

“I don’t know, why do you?” Erik doesn’t seem to want an answer, and Charles doesn’t have one for him anyway. “Raven is sleeping downstairs. I only got her to leave twenty minutes ago, so it seems to reason that you’d wake up now.”

Charles looks down at the crook of his arm, where the IV was – is, in reality – and sees the bandage there, the bruise peeking out from around the edges.

“I hope I never wake up,” Charles says, ignoring the _what is he look at those blue wonder if he can hear me_ that pushes against his mind. “I’d rather be here and have it not be real than wake up there again.”

Erik doesn’t say anything for a long time, though the voices chorus up – _the damage dear lord this is why humans have to fuck look at him_ – so it’s almost like he never stopped speaking at all.

“I’ll go get Raven,” Erik says, and touches the side of Charles’s face. His fingers are rough, but his touch is gentle. The volume spikes, _oh fucking hell_ , and then drops as Erik stands. Charles pushes his fingers against his left temple, and watches him leave.

 

Raven is angry. She is livid, and Charles watches her kick the chair into the wall. She might otherwise frighten him, but he’s relatively certain that if anything were to happen to him he’d just wake up. The benefits of being delusional.

Someone else is screaming in the background, incoherent death threats and plots for revenge. Charles watches her form waver and shift, flickering from young girl to something lithe and scaled and then back again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, eventually. She’s panting for breath, and her face is pulled tight like she’s trying not to cry.

“Show me what you really look like,” he says. There are no threats here other than what he can create with his mind, but that color blue makes something in him stir, some mostly-forgotten memory that he once held close. He’s lost most of those, or buried them so far down that he can’t reach them anymore.

“I –” _should have known I wouldn’t get away with wonder if he’ll be frightened now but he won’t he’s Charles, it’s Charles_ , and her eyes flicker shut and there’s the sound of bamboo shoots clacking together in the wind. She’s naked, or naked enough, slim blue hips and whorls of scales edging her stomach and thighs and breasts. She blinks at him, languid like a reptile, and Charles thinks about chess for the first time in a long time. Just another memory he can’t quite recall.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asks, and surprise flits across her face. She starts to laugh, hard enough that her shoulders shake, though it sounds as if it’s desperation as much as humor.

“I missed you so, Charles,” she says, and sits on the edge of his bed. He touches the inside of one arm, and she’s warm, like human flesh, recognizable.

“I’m sorry that I don’t remember you.” He means it as much as he can mean anything in a dream.

She shrugs, and stretches out next to him, centimeters away but not touching. He can feel her proximity like static electricity, but it’s not unpleasant. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It doesn’t matter.”

Charles isn’t sure he quite believes her, not when the voices are whispering in his ear, saying, _he’s not present, not really, how could I think I could help him even if Erik said even if I said I wouldn’t leave him_. He doesn’t listen to them, but they’re hard to ignore completely.

“I missed you,” she says, eventually, and closes her eyes. Charles watches her and tries to identify how long it takes her to drift off.

 

Charles decides it’s better not to sleep, not for as long as he can help it. He’ll escape the hospital for as long as possible. He stares at the ceiling, instead, cataloguing the cracks in the dark wood.

 

Raven is still asleep when Erik enters the room again. He looks at her with his lips pressed tightly together, but he doesn’t leave. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, either. Instead, he rights the chair that Raven kicked into the wall, and sits down. The chair creaks but holds.

It’s been quiet in his head for the past few hours, but something about Erik sitting in the room disturbs things, riles them up.

_– don’t think it don’t – electrodes pressed to your to his temples while they measure – he’s staring does he know that he’s looking that he looks like – I know what torture looks like and that’s –_

Charles is staring. Erik has his hands fisted against his thighs, and he’s staring back, though not at Charles’ face.

Erik is staring at the place where Raven’s fingers are touching the side of Charles’s palm, so softly that he honestly hadn’t noticed. Erik’s face is so severe and intense that Charles can’t look away.

“You’re staring at me,” Erik says, finally, eyes flicking up to Charles’s face and getting stuck there. _he could use a haircut he’s so skinny but god those eyes_.

Charles shrugs. “You don’t mind, do you?” He’s not sure what makes him say it, other than that he has nothing to lose and something about Erik makes him want a reaction.

Erik snorts, and leaves.

 

“You have to sleep.” Raven is wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt now, her hands on her hips. Charles isn’t dizzy anymore, except that his body keeps telling him to sleep and he doesn’t want to.

“I’ll wake up back there,” he says, like fact, and squeezes his eyes shut against the remembered electricity and injections and day-in day-out medication. Sterile loneliness.

“Shh,” she says, gently. Her steps toward the bed are hesitant. _How could anyone let this happen how could they if I hadn’t I would kill them again and again I would kill every last one of them_ – and Charles winces at the fervor, the violence, the attached imaged of collapsed craniums and pools of blood and the doctor’s face empty and cold and blue-lipped on the floor. “You’re never going back there. I’m not going to let it happen.”

“How can you know that? You’re not real, you’re not –” Charles cuts himself off and presses his hands to his temples, trying to hold all of his thoughts in.

“I am. I _am_ real, I promise,” Raven says, helpless. Charles wants to believe her more than anything but he can’t. He shakes his head, and tries not to listen to the sharp turn of melancholy, the _how am I ever going to he’s never going to believe me_ , but he can’t dislodge it. “Sorry, sorry.” Raven is touching his hands where they are touching his head, whispering words that he can’t make out, and Charles doesn’t know what he did to make her care so much.

 

Charles is struggling while the orderlies pull him down the hallway. He knows this hallway, he knows that doorway, he knows what’s on the other side. He’s holding in sobs while they murmur sweet nothings in his ears about how it will all stop hurting soon, how they’ll make it all go away if he can just be patient and do as he’s told. They know better than he does.

He’s struggling, but he’s losing, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before they strap him down to the bed and attach him to the machine. He wonders what he’ll forget this time. He wonders if there will be anything left of him.

 

It’s the hands on his shoulders that wake him. He gasps and pushes and realizes that he’s so twisted up in his sheets that he can barely move his legs. Erik’s hands are like iron bands, tight and unrelenting, but when Charles looks up, Erik’s face is wet.

“It’s okay,” Erik says, “you’re awake now.” He’s not very comforting, not exactly, but his hands are a reassuring, solid pressure.

 _at least I knew what I was I wonder if he knows he doesn’t he doesn’t know and I can’t tell him_.

Erik lets go and takes half a step back. Charles rubs his hands over his face and realizes that he’d been crying in his sleep. His cheeks feel hot and tight, and he thinks that maybe he’s supposed to be embarrassed, except that Erik’s eyes are ringed with red, too. Charles wonders what Erik was dreaming about.

“Raven won’t –” Erik starts, then he reaches out and brushes his thumb against one of Charles’s wet cheeks, smearing the tears across his skin. Charles blinks, and holds still. “We won’t let anything happen to you.” _not ever no humans never again_.

 

Erik cuts Charles’s hair in the bathroom. He sits Charles down on the edge of the tub, tucks a sheet underneath Charles’s chin as a barber would, and starts in with a pair of kitchen scissors. Raven watches from the doorway, occasionally chiming in with her opinion. Erik taps Charles with the flat of the scissors whenever he starts to fidget.

“It’s a little longer on the left side,” Raven says. “No, no, not that much.”

“I know, Raven, I have it under control,” Erik replies with something of a drawl in his voice.

Charles lets his eyes close and listens to them talk, bantering with an ease that he can’t imagine. When Erik touches his chin to turn his head, Charles lets him, and when Erik pulls his hair, Charles doesn’t protest.

“Oh, that looks good!” Raven says, and laughs. “I wasn’t sure at first.”

Charles opens his eyes. He can see the mirror from where he’s sitting. His hair is shorter, but not harsh or severe in any way. It falls around his face like a soft curtain and he pushes his fringe out of his eyes with a huffed breath. _now that looks better_ , he hears. _such a long neck – more like he used to before – if only everything were so easy_.

“You look very handsome, if I do say so myself,” Erik says, and tugs on a lock of Charles’ fringe before pulling off the sheet. Raven wraps her arms around his neck.

“What to play chess?” she asks.

 

The board she brings upstairs is old enough that cracks are starting to show in the finish on the wood. He has on a shirt and pants that must be Erik’s – they’re far too large for him, and he can’t remember owning anything much other than the hospital uniform. He can’t remember putting on these clothes, either. He’ll have to leave the top floor, eventually, he supposes, but he has no idea what he would do with more space.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember how to play,” he says, apologetic. There’s a flash of disappointment so sharp that it sears him, and then it’s entirely subsumed. Charles rubs at the back of his head, but it’s not a hurt he can soothe away.

“That’s okay,” she says, and sits cross-legged on the end of the bed. Charles leans back against the headboard, and Raven sets up the board between them. “You taught me, once, so now it’s my turn to teach you.” She shakes her head. “Erik will never play with me, so it’ll be nice to have an opponent.”

“Oh.” That doesn’t sound so terrible. He’s never been good at games, but maybe this will be different. “Okay, then.”

She takes a deep breath, and Charles smiles at her because he can. “First of all, each of the pieces has a different name.” She picks one up, rolling it between her fingers and her thumb. “This one, for instance, is a pawn.”

 

When Charles finally makes it downstairs on his own, Raven and Erik are arguing in the kitchen with hushed voices. Charles can’t precisely say how long he’s been here, but long enough for him to be able to tell that their anger is part worry and part desperation.

“–Shaw, Raven, you know what this means to me,” Erik is saying.

“I can’t do this by myself, Erik,” Raven’s words are strung tight together with tension. “Not with Charles – not with things the way that they are. He’ll – he responds to you.”

Erik laughs softly, with more than a tinge of bitterness, and _not the way I want him to_ floats to Charles on the stagnant air. He’s clutching the railing, standing on the lowest step and caught there, wondering if he should pretend never to have heard, or if he should march into the kitchen and demand some sort of explanation. As if they’d actually tell him anything.

He’d never realized that he was that much trouble, though they have been feeding and housing him for – for _weeks_ , maybe, who knows, so it probably –

Charles shudders and forces himself to stop thinking about it, before he gets caught in it and can’t get himself back out.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” Erik says. His voice is louder, and Charles wonders if he should retreat back upstairs, now, but he can’t stop listening.

_– kill those fucking bastards for what they did – I’m so close so close – what if Charles what if I can’t – you’d better not leave him you’d better –_

Charles shudders again, watching the shadows move in the doorway, and carefully climbs the stairs back to his room.

 

Charles is mostly sleeping, but Erik creeping into his room rouses him. He doesn’t move and keeps his eyes closed. Everything is louder when Erik is around, but Charles likes him anyway. He likes the way Erik’s smile goes from sharp to soft at a moment’s notice, and it’s obvious from the way that he moves and speaks that he’s dangerous, but Charles has never felt threatened by him.

It’s his eyes, maybe. The way that he stands close to Charles, as if waiting to touch him, but he doesn’t seem hurt by the times Charles shrinks away.

Now, Erik is standing at the foot of the bed, and he touches Charless ankle, utterly soft, through the blankets. Charles raises his head and takes in Erik’s slicked back hair, his leather jacket, and his high-necked sweater.

“You’re going,” Charles says, like the fact that it is. Erik smiles with one corner of his mouth. His hand is still touching Charles through the covers, and the voices aren’t screaming, or crying, or urging him on, but they are clear like crystal.

_– so vulnerable and so powerful – what I’d do if I could trust you to – touch yes fuck –_

Charles sucks in an unsteady breath, closes his eyes against the wave of unfamiliar yearning, and Erik pulls his hand away. Charles makes a noise in the back of his throat, and he can hear Erik’s hard exhale.

“I’ll come back,” Erik says, and Charles opens his eyes and meets Erik’s, wide and guileless. “I promise.”

“I don’t put much stake in promises,” Charles admits with a one-shouldered shrug. He bats away the _how strong you must be – would that I could –_ as the lie that it is. Charles isn’t strong. He has no idea who it is, precisely, that he’s supposed to be.

“I’ll still keep mine,” Erik says, with the steeled shoulders of someone who believes that he’s telling the truth. Charles recognizes that look from all the people who held him down and told him that everything would be okay. “Wait and see.”

“I suspect that I shall still be here if you do return,” Charles says, “as I have nowhere else to go, and I’m still uncertain as to whether either of you do, in fact, exist.”

Erik leaves shortly thereafter. The voices recede, and Charles manages a few more hours of uneasy sleep.

 

Erik is gone for a long while. Charles takes the time to look through the house, though he has to work his way up to venturing down the stairs without Raven present. The house is stuffy and too large, like it was once well used, full of pattering feet and movement and discarded books. Now there’s barely even furniture – most of the walls are bare and there are no decorations, no well-loved possessions. Charles runs one finger along the windowsill in the kitchen and it comes back grey with dust.

“This house isn’t really ours,” Raven says, from over Charles’s shoulder. Charles jumps, spins around and nearly falls. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. No one lives here, so we’re staying, for now.”

“Where – where do you live?” Charles asks, heart still thumping in his chest. Usually he can tell when someone is near him – the voices are always louder then. Not right now, though – they’re still just a murmur in the back of his mind, out of focus.

“Nowhere, really. Wherever it’s safe, for a time. Erik is –” _coming back he’s coming back_ “– usually the one who finds them.”

Charles steps away from the windowsill, and looks at the empty cupboards and bare countertops. “Why?” he asks. “Why isn’t it safe for – for you and Erik?” He quiets, wondering, and then it occurs to him. “Is it because of me? Is it me?”

“No, no, it’s not you,” Raven says, her red hair curling at the back of her neck. She takes three steps forward and curves one hand around the back of his shoulder, like she’s going to pull him in close but isn’t sure how he’d react if she did. “It’s because we’re special, because I look – like this, and Erik. Erik’s never shown you his power, has he?” _Charles, Charles, shhhh, it’s going to be okay. You’re fine, everything is fine._

Charles closes his eyes and lets the voice soothe him, lets it wash over him, familiar, and Raven pulls him close. She’s so warm. It’s only with his face pressed to her collarbone that he realizes that he’s shaking.

 

Raven takes him outside. It’s spring, or close enough, and the buds are starting to grow on the bare branches of the trees. The back yard is large and fenced off, unkempt and wild. Charles sits in the middle of the grass, buried up to his hips, and discovers that his fingers still know how to make daisy chains.

After a moment, Raven sits next to him. “Daisy chains,” she says. “Something else you taught me, though you never liked them as much as you liked chess.”

“Will you tell me how we met?” Charles asks. He’s wanted to ask, but this is the first time that he’s had the courage.

“Of course,” she says, though her voice is sad. _–if only I’d been there you might remember it yourself and we could still you could still –_ “You were nearly twelve, and I was – around ten, I think.”

“I – how old does that make me now?” He can feel his face flush, and he looks at the sky, the clouds piled up on top of one another, and he tries not to listen to the way her voice catches, the anger _– they took so much from him those fucking monsters –_ that flashes through him and recedes.

“Seventeen. Seventeen and a half, really. Your – you were born in September.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t remember.” He looks at the daisy chain in his hands, and then at Raven face, which is tightly controlled in a way that Charles hates.

“Never apologize for that again, all right? Never again.” She takes a deep breath. “So, you were twelve, and I was ten.”

 

Erik comes home with a duffle bag in each hand and a tan. Charles stands in the doorway to his room, looking over the banister, downstairs to the main hallway. Erik’s boots squeak on the wood and leave a trail of mud. He glances up, and catches Charles’s eyes, lips pressed into a thin line. Charles feels exposed, with his bare feet and the too-wide collar of another borrowed shirt.

_– she says he’s curious about – don’t look don’t even look – even if he’s never quite right he’ll always be – just look at him –_

Charles rubs at his temple and Erik turns away, dropping his bag on the dirty floor and stomping toward the kitchen.

 

They pack up that night. Charles sits on his bed and watches the efficient way Raven moves from one room to another, putting things back where they belong, packing up what few items are theirs, wiping away any trace of them. Charles pushes his hair out of his face and tentatively puts one foot on the floor.

“This is real,” he says, though he’s still not completely certain. His voice wavers like a plucked string. “It is. This is real.”

He still doesn’t have any shoes, but when they walk out to the car together, the stones are flat and smooth beneath his feet.

 

They spend several days driving, and several nights in highway-side motels. Charles shares a bed with Raven, and the voices never go away. They hum at him, and laugh, and cry, and beg him to get better. They mutter how pale his skin is, how utterly smooth, how plush his lips, how blue his eyes. They take notice of the curve of his bare toes; they buzz through his veins like desire. Charles is unsettled and restless. He can’t sleep. His skin is hot, and he bites his fingernails down to the quick.

He watches Raven curl up tighter into herself, and Erik’s chest as it rises and falls with his breath.

 _Beautiful,_ the voices say, _broken and beautiful_ , and an image pushes into Charles’s head like a silent film – Erik is pressing him down onto a bed and talking to him in languages that Charles doesn’t know. Erik is staring down at him in wonder, and Charles, the Charles in his mind, opens his mouth and licks his lips and –

Charles shakes his head to dispel the image, but the afterimages flicker in his mind and don’t, entirely, disperse.

 

“Where are we?” Raven asks, yawning. She has her feet up on the dashboard and one hand dangling out of the open window. Charles is in the back seat, feet pulled up onto the upholstery, staring out the window. Erik is driving with the window open, one palm pressed to the hot metal body of the car. Charles wonders how he’s not burning his hands.

“Tennessee,” Erik says. Even with all the windows open, Charles is sweating. His fringe is curling up with the humidity, tousled by the wind. Charles doesn’t much care where they’re going, but the longer they drive, the hotter it seems to get.

“And how much farther do we have to go?” Raven’s voice is a drawl, lazy and sarcastic. Charles can see the smile that flits across Erik’s face in the rearview mirror. He’s been watching for it. Erik’s eyes flick back, catching Charles’ through the mirror, and the déjà vu takes hold of him again. It’s happening all the time now, though no solid memories have returned with it.

_– always staring like he can see right into me and he could he does if he only knew it –_

Charles is the one that looks away.

 

Charles draws stories from Raven with careful pleas. She tells him about the drawings she’d leave on the back of his homework and how he’d try to explain it to her though he never quite made her understand. She tells him of the evenings when his parents were out, and the riotous laughter as they chased each other through the house.

One night she shows him a letter.

“You wrote it,” she says, “the night before they took you away. You – knew that they were coming. You always knew what we were thinking, and so – you knew. I found it in the space behind your dresser.”

She’s tearing up, scrubbing at her cheeks. He never means to make her sad but he always manages to anyway. Without meaning to.

She shows it to him – the childish hand, the careful letters, but he still can’t read them right.

“Tell me what it says?” he asks, tentative, and he pretends that he doesn’t hear the way that her voice cracks when she starts to read it aloud.

 

They’re stopped at a gas station – Erik is sitting in the front seat while the tank fills, and Raven is buying snacks at the small store on the premises. She always wears her blonde disguise when they’re in public, so that she doesn’t scare the locals.

“Raven says that you’re different, like she is.” Charles is sitting in the back seat, and Erik turns to look at him. He has one eyebrow raised in what seems to be almost – amusement.

“I am,” Erik says, his accent sharp on the consonants. “Though not in the same way as she.”

“How, then?”

“I’ll show you sometime,” Erik says, noncommittal. The tank is almost full and Raven is just leaving the store. “You’re different, too.”

Charles laughs, and he’s not sure if the _it’s a pity he’s so – crazy_ that bubbles up is just the voices or if it’s a memory. “Of course I’m different,” he says. “I’m crazy.”

Erik shakes his head. “You’re not.” _– they made you this way the same way that shaw made me –_

Charles rolls his eyes. “You don’t really think that.”

Raven opens the car door before Erik can respond and he gets out of the car without speaking again. Charles watches him take out the gas pump and close the tank, but he doesn’t look Charles’s way again.

 

“Okay,” Erik says, four days later. He puts the car in park. “We’re here.”

“You’re sure you cleaned it up?” Raven asks, with one pale eyebrow arched. She won’t change again until they’re safely inside. Charles is learning Raven’s pink face the way that he’s learned her natural one.

“It’s spotless, I assure you,” Erik says, and Charles can guess that they’re not talking about dust but he can’t parse it further than that. He wanders away instead of wondering about it, and lets their conversation fade. The voices fade with them, and Charles is left in near quiet, for the moment. Just echoes, faint reverberations of leftover feelings.

They’re in Louisiana, Charles is somewhat certain, just on the edge of what appears to be a large expanse of marsh. The road ends in dirt about one hundred feet from the front walk. The house itself is huge and ornate, just one large level half propped up off the water on stilts. The grass gives slightly underneath Charles’ new shoes, so he can tell that they aren’t on the most solid of ground.

Charles wants to ask where the house came from, but Erik and Raven are still talking quietly by the car. Charles sits on the front steps to wait and practices tying and untying his shoes.

 

The whole house is hardwood floors and long, gleaming countertops. It’s mostly one huge room, divided into kitchen, dining room and sitting room, but there appears to be a master bedroom, at least one guest bedroom, and a study. Charles hates it immediately, and can’t imagine that he’d have liked the original inhabitant much, either. The bar is well stocked, and there are several boxes of cigars lined neatly up against the window, where some other person might put a family photo. There is a billiards table in one corner, and an entire wall of windows looking out over the marsh.

“The man who owned this house must have been quite wealthy,” Charles says. He will admit that the view is nice, but he can’t abide the smell of cigars.

“He was,” Erik says. He’s grinning wide and sharp, somewhat inappropriately jovial given how banal the comment was.

“Where is he now?” Charles asks, curiosity pinged both by Erik’s expression and his response.

“Oh, he’s quite dead.” Erik’s voice is matter of fact – _quite dead indeed_ – and Charles gets a bright flash: blood spattering against the big windows as Erik slashes a man open, right across the neck, the fear on the man’s face, the anger on Erik’s. Charles shakes his head, blinking a few times to clear his vision. He touches the glass where the blood had splattered, or would have, if what Charles had seen was real.

“Ah, I see,” Charles says, and watches his fingertips leave streaks on the clean glass.

 

Charles refuses the master bedroom, and falls asleep in the guest bed. Raven takes the master bedroom, and Erik takes the couch. Charles hasn’t slept with a closed door since before the breakout. He can see the curve of Erik’s back when he looks through the slit in his open doorway. Erik sleeps utterly still – his fingers don’t even twitch, and Charles can only just barely see the rise and fall of his ribcage as he breathes.

Someone, somewhere, is screaming.

_– can’t do it I can’t do I can’t do it I – this won’t have to hurt if only you’d – oh god not again I promise I won’t – NO MOTHER PLEASE NO I’LL KILL YOU I’LL –_

Charles covers his ears with his hands, but it does nothing. He stares out the door at Erik’s still body, fingernails biting into the sides of his face. _– if you touch one hair on his head I swear you’ll never touch anything again –_

Erik gasps into life and sits up, abrupt. His hair has shaken itself out of its hold and falls in sections over his face. The screaming stops.

“You didn’t hear that,” Erik says quietly, like the words are for no one at all, but Charles knows. Erik is talking to him.

“I hear too much,” Charles whispers. “I hear everything.” But he doesn’t really know what he means.

 

Charles spends most days staring out over the marsh and trying to ignore the violent things he sees whenever he focuses too hard on the specifics of the house. Erik spends most days taking the study apart and bickering with Raven. He is organized, starting at one end of the room and slowly making his way through. He opens every book and pulls them off the shelves. He taps every wall. He opens every drawer and pulls each out to look beneath it. He keeps a pile of hidden things and a pile of papers in soft manila folders.

“What are you looking for?” Charles asks one day, feet bare on the plush carpet, and Erik grins that sharp grin and spreads his arms. He’s kneeling on the floor amid strewn papers that Charles isn’t sure he’d want to read even if he could still put the letters together correctly.

“My enemies,” he says. _– ask me ask me ask me I’ll tell you if you ask me –_ Charles hears the words and he desperately doesn’t want to listen to them. He doesn’t want to know, not yet, he doesn’t think.

Raven is leaning in the doorway, her face tense. Charles senses an old argument, and he takes a step back.

“Don’t, Erik,” Raven says. “Not right now.”

Erik laughs, and Charles wants to shrink away from the anger in it. “You want to be included, Raven? You want to go with me when I hunt? Would you have me leave Charles in the dark?”

Charles takes in the words and wonders if he wants to know what it is that Erik hunts. Charles thinks of the blood he didn’t see splashed against the window, and the killing that he didn’t see Erik do, and curls his toes into the carpet.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Raven says. “But that doesn’t make this the time, either. Not when –“ _– god, he doesn’t even know what he is – barely knows who he – barely knows –_ She shakes her head, and Erik frowns.

“Stop,” Charles says. “Stop talking about me like I’m not here. I’m _right here_.” Charles’s hands are fisted at his sides, and he doesn’t remember clenching them. They all think they know how to fix him, every single one of them, but no one really does. He’s more certain that he can’t be fixed.

_– when he realizes what he is he’ll be – at last a flush to that pale skin – anger oh thank god he might actually be –_

“Stop, please. Just stop.”

He doesn’t know why he says it. After all, neither of them had said a word. Charles isn’t even sure whom he’s talking to. He turns and leaves before either of them open their mouths.

 

It takes Charles too long to tie his shoes, the only shoes that he owns, still shiny new and half broken in, so he leaves them untied and starts to walk up the dirt road. He’ll go back, eventually, but he can’t understand why he’s so angry and he can’t make it go away.

The voices recede to a quiet whisper, barely there soft, and Charles pulls off his shoes and digs his toes into the soil. The quiet is so alien that it makes Charles shiver. He wonders why it is only when he is alone that the voices leave him be.

 

Erik packs his duffle, and won’t tell Charles where he is going. Charles suspects that Raven knows, but he doesn’t ask her. She and Charles have been playing chess; Charles is getting better at it. The chess set is one of her few possessions.

Erik sets his duffle on the floor, zipped and half-full. He stands for a moment, like he’s going to say something but he hasn’t yet figured out what.

“Before you go,” Charles says, and Erik’s head lifts. “Show me what you can do. Please.” It is and also isn’t a question. Erik is staring right at Charles, all his intensity focused on one single point, and Charles doesn’t know if he likes the attention or not.

_– he’s so determined the set of that jaw I’ll frighten him but maybe not too much maybe not –_

“Fine,” Erik says. “As you wish.” He holds out his hand, and one of the knives from the knife rack on the kitchen island snaps to his hand, like magic. Charles watches it quivering there, stuck with potential energy. Erik’s eyes narrow, and the knife folds up on itself, like an origami crane. He closes his fist, and the metal crumples like crushed paper and falls to the floor.

Charles scarcely breathes. Erik stares at him, daring him to speak. _– go on be afraid like everyone always is –_ Charles licks his lips and Erik’s eyes follow the action.

“Impossible,” Charles says. “You’re an impossibility.” He doesn’t mean it as an insult, and Erik doesn’t take it as one, his face softening into a smile. A sharp, wolfish smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“No more than you are.” Erik is still staring, and Charles touches the buttons on his cardigan and wonders how much metal is in them. He thinks about the way that Erik looks at him.

“Do you want me?” Charles asks, though he can’t say why he chooses that moment. _yes,_ the voices whisper, _yes, yes, you_.

Erik’s face shutters closed and he leans down to grab the handle of his duffle.

“I should go,” he says, and Charles watches him leave. He thinks that is answer enough.

 

“You shouldn’t push him so,” Raven says, later, but there isn’t a note of chiding her voice. He doesn’t ask how she knows. She’s smiling while she takes his remaining knight. “Charles, that’s the most –” _like yourself I’ve seen you_ , the voices chorus up to finish for her, and Charles doesn’t remember much about that person, doesn’t really remember what he’s like. He presses his fingers into his temple and looks down at the board.

 

The longer Charles spends in the house, the more he hates it. Something about it makes the dreams worse. He wants Erik to come back so they can leave. Or better yet, Erik should have taken them with him. He paces. He doesn’t sleep nearly enough, because the dreams are back, the ones where they lead him down the hallway and he goes, he goes like the sheep that he is, and they strap him down, and they cut him open. They start with his belly and they cut jaggedly up, and up, the scalpel catching on his ribs and skittering off into the soft tissue of his lungs. He tries to scream, to moan out the pain but he can’t make a sound.

 _Brain next,_ the doctors say. _All those thoughts and feelings, ready to be cut right out._

And then Raven wakes him up. Her eyes are bruised from the lack of sleep, and she touches his forehead, a gesture too maternal for someone no older than fifteen. She sobs, once, and pushes her head into the crook of his neck, curling up with him on top of the comforter.

“Charles,” she whispers, so quiet he’s can barely hear it, her breath soft against his neck. “Was it really that horrible?”

He wonders if he was screaming, though he doesn’t remember screaming in his dream. He must have been loud enough to wake her, though.

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem like anything other than a fog. The pills, the injections. Strapped to a table and pumped full of electricity. Rinse, repeat, start it all over.” Charles stares at the wall while he talks, voice wiped clean of any emotion. “I try not to focus on the blank spaces,” he admits. The skin of Raven’s face is slightly rough to the touch, and warm. It’s wet where she’s been silently crying.

“I’m glad that I killed him,” she says, her voice no louder than before. “Not the patients, I – we didn’t want to hurt them – but the doctor. I split him open with his own letter opener. I’ve never been so glad to hear someone scream.”

There’s no remorse in her voice, not even as Charles see a flash: Raven’s hands shifting from pale peach to dark blue, clutching the letter opener, and the doctor’s condescension melting into fear and then arching into pain as Raven bares her teeth and bears down on him. There’s a flash, and Erik is watching from the doorway, and the blood is pooling on the floor, splattering all over that desk that Charles sat in front of every two weeks. Where the doctor told him how crazy he was and how they were going to fix him, even as the voices sang up his lies in the back of Charles’s mind.

Erik says, _Well done,_ subtly impressed, and Charles shivers, pushing the image away. He wraps his arms around Raven’s back and wishes for clean sleep. He knows that he’ll get none.

 

“You have to eat,” Raven says, startling Charles from his reverie. He’s not even sure what he was thinking about. He loses time, sometimes, to thoughts that he can never remember afterward.

“I despise this house,” Charles says. He’s mostly certain that he’s said it before.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Raven says, and sets a tuna sandwich on the coffee table in front of him. “But you still have to eat.”

Charles doesn’t understand the pleasures of food. At the ward, it was always the same, every meal on rotation. He eats what is in front of him and little else. He picks up the sandwich and takes a bite, barely tasting it.

“You used to love tomatoes,” Raven says, taking a seat next to him. “You didn’t like most fruit but you’d eat a tomato raw.”

Charles looks down at his plate. He wishes, sometimes, that he could be the person that Raven remembers, but he doesn’t know how to be. He doesn’t even know how to try.

“Do you miss him?” Charles asks. He takes another bite of his sandwich, and watches the confusion cross Raven’s face before he looks away.

“Who?”

“The boy I used to be.” Charles has he feet tucked up underneath him on the couch, and he listens to Raven shift next to him.

“You’re the same boy,” she says. Charles looks up, sharply, and starts to shake his head, but she grabs him by the chin and holds him still. “You’re the same boy. A little lost, maybe, but I’d know. You wouldn’t. Don’t doubt me.”

He nods, once, and she lets go of his chin.

“Now eat.”

 

Erik is gone for most of a month. He comes back exhausted and limping. Raven and Charles peer over the back of the couch as the door slams, and Erik dumps his duffle on the front mat.

“I’m fine,” he says, before Raven can get the question out. Charles doesn’t believe him.

“What happened?” Raven’s voice is bland, like she isn’t worried. Charles doesn’t believe her, either.

“Non-metal projectile,” Erik says, with his sharp smile. There’s no mirth in it, not today. “Glass, to be precise.”

“And you’re certain that you got it all out?”

Erik makes an unconvincing noise, and Raven rolls her eyes.

“Are you still bleeding?” Raven tries again, and Erik shakes his head.

_– hurts – can’t believe that bastard – probably should have stitched it up but I couldn’t –_

Charles can feel the twinge in the side of his thigh, a burning, and he rubs at his temple. “Show her,” he says. “Make sure.”

Erik look at Charles, startled, and says, “If the lord commands,” slightly mocking. _He’s getting stronger but is he – does he know_ , the voices swell up and Charles digs his fingernails into his skin.

“Please,” he says. He doesn’t know why he says it except that he wants the voices to stop, and he wonders – Erik can crush metal like paper, and Charles is so tired. He’s so tired of trying to push the voices away.

“Fine,” Erik says, and the look he turns on Charles is more perplexed than it is irritated. Charles looks at Raven, and she’s smiling at him, small and real.

 

Erik bleeds all over the tub, but Raven gets the last of the glass out. The cut doesn’t seem infected, yet, so she cleans it out, bandages it all up, and pronounces it as good as it is going to get. Charles watches from down the hall, seated on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest.

“This is why you should –” Raven starts, voice hushed, but Charles can still hear her.

“Don’t,” Erik says.

“I can help you.” She’s frustrated, Charles knows. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“I always have before.” Erik’s voice is casually dismissive. He prods at the bandages with his fingertips, testing the pain.

“But you don’t have to.”

_– so stubborn, can’t you see that I can’t help – he’s still too unstable what if he heard – Charles it’s all Charles can’t you see –_

“You’re all that he has,” Erik says, and Charles holds his breath and digs his fingernails into his kneecaps. It’s always about him. They’re always worrying about him.

Charles hates it.

“That’s not true.” Charles has to work to hear her, this time. “He has you, too. So don’t leave us behind.”

 _I couldn’t even if I wanted to,_ Charles hears from nowhere, and the yearning that wells up inside him has no place and no direction. He _wants_ , he wants so badly, but he’s not sure what it is that he is wanting. He pushes his forehead into his knees and tries to breathe around the lump in his throat.

 

They leave the house the next day, and Erik says nothing at all for sixteen hours. Charles counts them. It’s raining, and Charles watches the wind whip the trees, and the raindrops slide across the glass. It reminds him of something he can’t quite put his finger on, some other car, some other silence, some other Charles.

They’re continuing south, south and west, and the rain follows them. They get a room in a motel on the side of the highway as the sun starts to go down, but Charles is too restless to go inside. He walks a slow circuit around the motel, past the three other parked cars, past the muffled argument coming from room 17, past the _– you fucking bitch how dare you – don’t you take a step closer or I swear I’ll –_ , stepping in puddle after puddle until his shoes are soaked through. He lets the rain pour down on his shoulders back and face, lets it plaster his hair to his skin. The water is cool against the humid air.

When he gets back to the room, Erik is in the shower, and Raven is on one of the beds with a book. She looks up when he closes the door behind him, eyes widening, and scrambles to Charles’s side.

“You’re so stupid,” she says. “You should’ve stayed underneath the overhang. You’re going to catch your death, and – we can’t –”

“I’m f-fine,” Charles says, and realizes that he’s shivering. He lets Raven pull off his shoes, listening to the wet thump they make when she drops them to the floor. She touches the side of his face, pushing his wet hair off of his forehead. “I j-just wanted everything to be qu-quiet for a short wh-while, b-but – but it w-wasn’t.”

“Oh,” she says, and hugs him, wet jumper and all, and tucks her chin on his shoulder. “How bad is it?”

He shrugs, not wanting to worry her, and honestly unsure how to describe it anyway. The voices are always there, telling him how scared they are for him, how much they want him, how delicate and beautiful he is, and he knows none of it is true, but the _yearning_ is new, and he doesn’t know what it wants.

They’re still curled up on top of the comforter when Erik gets out of the shower. His hair is wet and pushed off of his face. He’s freshly shaven, and his shirt is damp where it’s sticking to his chest and stomach. Charles feels like he’s been punched him in the windpipe, short of breath.

_– does it count as a yes if I never said it aloud? if he doesn’t know he heard it –_

“That’s another way to shower, I suppose,” Erik says, and smiles. Charles has mostly stopped shivering, but a fresh shudder runs through him when Erik touches the top of his head. Raven is watching them in silence, her face expressionless. Charles hates it when he can’t read her.

“I didn’t think you’d want company,” Charles says, without knowing why. Erik’s face freezes for a moment – _Erik’s hand curves over Charles’s naked shoulder, the steam fogs up the glass, the noise Charles makes is drowned out by the thundering water and Erik is leaning in, slowly, slowly –_ and then he laughs, full and deep.

“Very thoughtful of you,” he says.

 

Charles sways where he’s standing, face a grimace of pain, and the woman closest to him, standing next to the sweet potatoes, shoots a worried look at him over her shoulder. There are too many of them, too many, and Charles kneels next to the zucchini and clutches at his head.

_– I can’t believe he’d do this to me after twenty – didn’t she say rice I thought she said – that boy will be the death of her I know it – too much money doesn’t he know that money’s tight he says – no I don’t want to go back I don’t want – why doesn’t anyone listen to me – useless useless useless –_

Raven is at his elbow in an instant, leaning down, and the closer she gets the more it hurts, the more the words tear him open and leave nothing behind.

“Charles?” Raven’s voice is quiet but _– oh god he can hear them all everyone in the whole store – twenty fucking years like nothing – she told me to leave but I know she doesn’t mean it I’ll –_ it sears through him, and Charles whimpers.

“It’s too much, too loud,” he grits out between his teeth. It’s so much worse, and he doesn’t know why. They’re skirting past Dallas and they _– he said he’d kill me if he – I should just go to the farmer’s market on Saturdays instead –_ need the food, and Charles is tired of being left in the car. He hadn’t thought he was getting better, but he hadn’t thought he was getting worse, either.

“Charles,” Raven says, and pushes her hands on either side of his face. “Focus on me, okay? Just me.”

Charles tries, and he gets _– on me focus on me I know you I wouldn’t hurt you – that bitch I can’t believe she’d – Charles, shhh, you’re fine, you’re fine –_ a voice that sounds something like Raven, like cool salve against the loud clamor. His head is throbbing, but he can breathe again, a little.

He gets flashes _– Raven as a child with her hair loose around her face, sitting at a large table in an empty dining room – a boy lying on the floor of a bedroom, papers spread all around and a pencil pressed against his mouth – the ward, and Charles’ sface, gaunt and shadowed purple, his eyes staring off into the distance –_ like painted scenes.

 _Push it away,_ the voices whisper, _push it all away,_ and he tries, hard enough that he’s sweating, his head and his heart pulsing in time, and the screeching din quiets to a low rumble, painful only as an unfocused ache, not the slash of a razor’s edge.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Raven whispers, and wraps an arm around Charles’ shoulders. Every patron they pass is conspicuously looking away, but Charles doesn’t have the energy to care. Raven and Erik won’t let them send him back, he’s almost certain of it.

 

Charles sleeps through the rest of the car ride and only wakes long enough to shuffle into their motel room. He hears soft snippets of conversation between Raven and Erik, and he’s sure that they’re talking about him, but he’s too tired to pay attention.

He sleeps deep and hard, as he hasn’t since the orderlies last pushed a syringe into the soft skin of his arm. He doesn’t dream, precisely. Images float past and are quickly replaced – a garden, and someone holding his hand; small feet crunching through the crust in the snow; the purse of the orderly’s mouth as he organizes pills into neat little cups; screaming and screaming until his throat is rust scraped and hoarse. Every time Charles tries to hold on to something it slips away, like sand between his fingers.

When he wakes again, he’s groggy, head full of cotton, mouth dry, fingers clutching at the sheets. The sun is streaming in through the gaps in the blinds, and Charles has no idea what time it is. Erik is sleeping on the other bed, and Raven isn’t in the room at all. Charles lies still, trying to force some kind of alertness, watching Erik’s chest rise and fall as he breathes. Erik’s mouth is pressed into a tight line, and Charles wants to smooth it, though he’s not sure how.

He slides out from underneath the covers, and sits, hesitant, on the edge of Erik’s bed. Erik’s brow furrows at the shift of weight, but he doesn’t wake. Charles just watches him for several long minutes, cataloguing the muss of his hair against the pillow, the curve of his knees on top of the comforter, the unbearable stillness of his body. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but the snatches of images _– a coin fluttering through the air – the mud squelching beneath thick-soled military boots – the soft clicking of a man trying to breathe with his throat cut open –_ don’t resolve into anything but a dread that curls up in the pit of Charles’s stomach.

Charles lies down on the bed. He’s facing Erik, centimeters between them, looking right at the delicate press of Erik’s eyelashes against his cheek. It’s just about the only thing delicate about him. He wonders if he should go back to his own bed, but he doesn’t. Instead, he closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

 

It must be hours later when Charles wakes again. He’s alone, and the TV is on, muted, turned to some black and white movie. His head is filled with static, like a radio station almost out of reach. The voices fade in and out, wavering and frail.

_– don’t tell me what’s best for – you don’t get – leave without – not if you want to –_

Charles rubs at his temple and tries to focus, but he can’t quite manage it. He thinks of Raven in the grocery store, uncaring as all eyes turned to them in confusion and dawning horror, and how her fingertips pressed the images right into him, and the voice in his mind that had sounded like her.

 _Raven?_ he thinks, pushing the thought out, untethering it like a boat loosed from a dock. It’ll float downstream, but it’ll never come back.

 _Charles?_ he hears, worn around the edges, and he can’t be sure, he can’t, but he wants her to come back. He’s alone and there’s no way to know if he should be worrying or if they’ve just left him, finally, fed up, or if they are right outside.

 _Come back,_ he thinks, plaintive. _I hate to be alone_.

 

Charles watches the sun go down through the blinds, sitting on the edge of Erik’s bed. If he closes his eyes, he can still smell Erik’s cologne, the one he only wears when they travel. It reminds Charles of winter, somehow, and snow.

The sun dips below the horizon. Charles hasn’t eaten since he woke, but he’s not sure that it matters. He’s staring at the wall when they come back. He has his hands fisted into his lap and he’s listening to the, _a promise is a promise – won’t you regret – have to get back,_ that bubbles through his mind.

“Am I special?” he asks, though the question isn’t directed at anyone in particular. Erik closes the door, whisper soft, and Raven’s breath is a gusted exhale.

“I heard you today,” she says, instead of answering. “You were calling for me.”

“You left me alone.” Erik is leaning back against the door, watching them with hooded eyes. Charles thinks about his eyelashes, and the slick of his hair, and his barrier of a smile. Raven touches Charles’s knee, and he turns back to her. She’s kneeling in front of him, biting her lip. She’s never looked younger. “How could you have heard me? I only just thought it.”

“I heard you,” she says, certain, and Charles shivers. He doesn’t know what that means.

“You’re special,” Erik says, though he doesn’t move any closer. Tendrils of yearning are curling around Charles’s lungs and making it difficult to breathe. Charles can’t look at Erik.

_– can you hear me, Charles? Can you – you’re special – perfect – you’re one of us –_

Charles curls his hands over Raven’s, his skin even paler against her dark blue. The palms of her hands are smooth and soft.

_– look at me –_

“Erik,” Raven says, a warning in her voice. Charles’s hands are shaking, a fine tremor, and the flash that he gets is his own profile, hair obscuring his eyes, his mouth bitten red and full, and there’s a growling want in the background, like nothing Charles’ has ever felt.

 _–_ look _at me –_

Charles looks at Erik, his piercing eyes, the tension in his faux-casual posture. The doorknob just below his right elbow has started to wilt, like a neglected flower, and Charles knows that’s Erik. That’s Erik doing that, even if he doesn’t mean to.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” Erik says. _I’m the one – that mouth – only what is wrong with me –_ Charles hears, and Charles isn’t willing to call himself sane, to declare himself mentally fit, but –

“Is that you?” he asks, voice hushed, and he gets a flash of dread, and relief, and lust, and he has to squeeze his eyes closed and push his fingers into his temples.

“Yes,” Erik says. And then Raven pulls Charles down, off the bed and into her lap, and she breathes in shakily, pulling him closer.

_– oh god he’s finally – it’s finally – I almost didn’t –_

Charles pushes his face against her neck and tries not to hear anything else. It doesn’t work.

 

“I’m still not him,” Charles whispers into the darkness. They are both asleep, he knows. Erik is breathing softly, and Raven shifts underneath the covers. “I’m still not that boy you knew, and I don’t know where he is. I don’t think he’s never coming back.”

 

They drive down into Mexico, and Charles can barely sleep. It’s too hot, with the heat baking down during the day and settling over everything like a suffocating blanket. It makes Charles sluggish.

_– don’t think it don’t – have to stop soon for gas – wonder what he’s looking at like that –_

He can’t keep anything out. He can’t tell what is Raven and what is Erik and what is neither of them – sometimes he can’t even tell what is his. If any of it is. He’s still not entirely sure.

Concentrating just makes his head pound, and when he manages to doze off, he dreams of electroshock and thick straps holding him down, immobile and helpless.

They drive over the border, into a new country, and Charles barely notices at all.

 

Erik idles the car outside a farmhouse between the US-Mexico border and nowhere at all. The road signs are in Spanish, but Charles wouldn’t know Mexico from Maine. He doesn’t know much about anywhere, really.

The lights are on in the farmhouse, and Erik puts the car in park. Raven is looking at Erik like this is something crucial, but they leave Charles out of it.

The voices whisper, _another sinner come to die – he’ll leave Charles here he has to he can’t really think – this one, maybe this one will know_ , and Charles doesn’t know what goes to whom, he only knows that there are so many things he doesn’t know.

“Is this a hunt?” Charles isn’t looking at Erik when he speaks, but he looks up and meets Erik’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Yes,” Erik says. “Now we flush out the enemy.” He’s smiling wider than Charles has ever seen, cheeks flushed, eyes hooded and sly. Charles can’t imagine that the man inside, the one who has not noticed their car, the one who is watching the telly and drinking a beer, does not deserve to die. Not if Erik thinks he does.

 

Charles stays in the backseat of the car. Raven and Erik go inside. There is a bounce in Erik’s step that Charles has never noticed before; Raven is warier. Charles gets a burst of surprise and shock, the quick flutter of trepidation that solidifies into something stronger. He can feel Erik’s pleasure, the heady addiction of power, and it makes Charles shudder, but not in revulsion. Not exactly. Raven is quiet, just a murmur of understanding, a trill of anger. Her moods are quieter than Erik’s, if Charles is pinning them correctly.

Charles gets a flash of Erik twirling a knife in the air, no strings, no fingers, no touch at all. Still in his chair in front of the telly, the man’s heartbeat kicks up into his throat. Charles doesn’t want to see this anymore. He doesn’t want to know.

_– he can’t be this can’t be – impossible – no please don’t I didn’t mean please no –_

Paralyzing, earth-shattering fear, like nothing Charles has ever felt before. And then silence.

 

Erik is covered in blood when he returns. It’s not his, but it’s soaked into his sleeves from the cuff all the way to his elbows, splattered on his shirt and the front of his trousers. Raven is padding behind him on quiet feet, her teeth gleaming out of the darkness in a Cheshire cat grin.

 _another one eager to spill his secrets,_ Charles hears, and the adrenaline kicks his heart into motion. Erik’s eyes are all pupil.

Charles had climbed out of the car when he saw the screen door open. He’s leaning against it, and Erik stops a few feet away from him. Charles can’t get that ending out of his head, that abrupt severance of thought and feelings. It echoes like an empty room, and Charles shudders.

_– I want – he’s breathing so quickly – don’t think it don’t –_

Charles goes on his tiptoes, pushing his fingers against the side of Erik’s jaw, and kisses him on the mouth. He tastes like copper wire and electrified metal, like the kiss of the electroshock machine, and Charles pulls back just as quickly. Erik is breathing too fast, and staring.

“No,” he says. “No, Charles, you can’t.”

 _– yes yes this is what you want – his eyes those lips fuck – if he wants and you –_ Charles hears from somewhere, somewhere else.

“You want it,” he says, more certain than ever. “Why can’t I?”

“You don’t know how to control your powers yet,” Erik says, voice soft and sure, like Charles can’t hear his mind slotting the logical reasons into place even as the force of Erik’s desire washes over him. “How can you know that this is what you want?”

Charles doesn’t, really. He wants something other than the memory of that sudden lack, that emptiness where there used to be a person. He glances at Raven, and she thinks, _don’t be careless with him_ , a wisp of a thought, but directed at Charles.

So Charles holds his tongue.

 

Charles turns eighteen close to the southern edge of Mexico. Raven sticks two candles in a store-bought honey bun, and lights them. Charles blows them out. He doesn’t have any distinct birthday memories. The honey bun is sweet and sticky, and Charles licks his fingers when he finishes it. Erik is watching him with a faint smile, one that speaks both of careful boredom and of rapt attention.

Charles gets a flash, bright and scalding, of Erik licking at the pads of Charles’s fingers, tongue wrapped around three digits at once, his mouth warm and wet and sucking. His eyes are hooded with pleasure.

Charles blushes, he can feel his face going hot, and he stuffs both hands underneath his thighs. The plastic of the chair is hard on his knuckles. Erik’s eyes widen, and then he carefully pulls the blank, bored look back over his features. Raven is pretending not to notice any of this.

_– nothing I can do he’ll just see it – the two of them god it’s like – doesn’t matter what I think –_

“Thank you,” Charles says.

“I know it’s not a real cake.” Raven shrugs. “I’d have gotten you a present, but.” She stops talking, and Charles takes it to mean, _I didn’t want to leave you for that long_.

“I don’t mind. Thanks again.” Charles smiles. He crumples the plastic honey bun wrapper in his fist with the two half-burnt candles, and hugs Raven.

 

Charles dreams of two big, iron gates, rusted and creaking with age. They’re curled like they’ve weathered an explosion, and they swing in the gentle breeze. Charles pays them no mind and walks past, down the cobblestone streets and muddy footpaths. None of the buildings are really standing – half a wall here, a first floor there. A building sliced neatly in half, so that the insides of all three levels are exposed to the open air.

“Hello?” Charles calls out, though he knows, somehow, that no one is going to answer him.

The cobblestones end, and Charles is standing in front of a hospital. It’s intact, electricity glowing through the windows, and someone is screaming. The sound of it wavers in and out, like static, and Charles is frozen. He wants to stop the screaming, but he doesn’t want to go inside the hospital. He doesn’t want to know what is inside.

Still, somehow, he’s moving forward, one pale hand curving around the door handle, like he’s not even connected to it anymore, and the door starts to open. Whispers slide out through the gap, oily and wrong – _it’s the pain you see I knew it’d be – please stop stop stop please stop – one more treatment I think we really seem to be making – show you I will I –_ like they’ll crumble when he touches them, like they’re more than he should know.

Charles wants to close the door, cut off the flow, but he can’t. His fingers are stuck to the metal.

 

Charles sits bolt upright, his hand still reaching in front of him, breath sobbing out of his lungs. He and Raven are sharing a bed and he reaches out for her, just to make sure. Her hand is soft and cool underneath his, and she shifts at the touch of his fingers, but doesn’t wake.

“Erik?” Charles whispers, as quietly as he can.

“Go back to sleep, Charles,” Erik says, gentle, gentle, and he might mean, _don’t pry_ , or he might mean, _you need to rest_ , but either way, his tone brooks no argument. Charles could check, perhaps. He might have that power, but he doesn’t want to know.

It takes Charles a long time to fall back asleep, but he knows that Erik is still awake when he does.

 

Raven’s voice is the easiest to identify. Charles can hear her, now, can pick her thoughts out of the wash of noise. She’s a murmur in the background, like a radio turned low. She’s always whispering to him, soft and close.

 _C’mon, Charles, wake up, wake up,_ she thinks in the morning, her fingers pushing his fringe out of his eyes, and Charles opens them to her face peering down at him, her lips pressed close together. _Good morning,_ she thinks, and then, quieter, _he looks pale today is he sleeping enough is he_ – Charles pushes himself up on one elbow.

 _Good morning,_ he sends back at her, a hesitant nudge in her direction, and her smile is blinding. He’s not sure if it’s wrong not to tell her about the other things he hears, but she doesn’t want him to know, and so he doesn’t want her to know about him knowing.

Erik is already dressed, seated at the table by the window, and Charles watches him clench his fist and release it, the molten ball of what used to be a wire clothes hanger, or a couple of safety pins, or handful of loose change shifting with the movement of his fingers. There’s something razor sharp about him today, something brittle. Charles gets the echoes of a boy with a haunted face and the barrel of a gun, but he doesn’t know what that means. Erik’s jaw clenches, and Charles watches the way it changes the shadows underneath his cheekbones.

He glances at Charles, his eyes wandering down Charles’ body and then jerking back to his face. _– goddamn him –_

“We should be on our way,” Erik says.

 

They’re still heading south, following the highways and skirting the cities. Erik lets his hand trail out the window and Raven steals a book from one their hotel rooms, something by some woman named Virginia Woolf. Raven says she’s famous, and reads a few passages out loud. Charles listens, sometimes, but mostly he dozes.

 

Erik finds another in Guatemala. This one begs and pleads and pisses himself, but underneath it Charles can still hear him calling Erik a filthy rat, an infestation to be exterminated, and so when the emptiness comes, the blood and the fear and then the sudden nothing, Charles doesn’t mind quite so much.

He brushes the blood off of Erik’s cheeks and forehead and chin with his thumb, and rubs it into his trousers. Erik’s breath catches in his throat and Charles pretends he can’t hear him thinking, _I want you, god do I want you_.

“He neglected to tell you about the one in Argentina,” Charles says, because it’s true, or, at least, he thinks it is. “Though I don’t know why.”  
Raven makes a soft sound, and Erik goes rigid.

_– his range my god – heard the bastard die – can’t imagine what that must be – how could we not know? –_

Their voices clamor up, too loud and sharp, and Charles squeezes his eyes closed, pushing his fingers against his temple.

“Can you tell me where?” Erik asks, voice terrible and quiet. Charles isn’t entirely sure, but he nods anyway.

 

“I want to try something,” Raven says, just across the border into Nicaragua. They’re pulled over while Erik examines his map more closely, and Raven clambers over the seat into the back. She grabs Charles’s hand, and says, “Tell me if you see it.”

Charles has no idea what she’s doing, but when she closes her eyes, he closes his also. She’s thinking, _well?_ and Charles doesn’t know what she’s asking him to do.

He gets a flash, then, of Raven as a child, standing on a tile floor, a kitchen, maybe, and there’s a small boy with dark hair opening the refrigerator. His grin is impish when he turns to her, and she laughs at something that he hasn’t said out loud.

“Do you see it?” Raven asks, voice tight and brittle, and the image shatters with her focus, splintering into shards. He nods, the words caught in his throat, and she pushes her fingers into his hair, pulling him close. “That’s you, you know? That’s you.” _– before your father and mother sent you away and you never even said – I found the note but you never –_

Charles tries to remember. He tries, has tried, but it’s like he’s caught in a dense fog. He can only see the things directly behind him, or the person standing next to him.

For Raven, he’ll try. But if he’s being honest, he wonders if there aren’t things he’s better off not knowing.

“Thank you,” he says, and leaves it at that.

 

“One of the girls pulled all of her hair out,” he says, quietly, in the car. They’re on a highway but it’s only two lanes, and slow going. “And one of the boys was certain that everyone in the ward was a demon sent from hell to tempt him. He stabbed another boy, once. With a fork.”

Charles doesn’t know why he’s talking. Raven is asleep in the passenger seat, and Erik is thinking about the mission, his mission, while he keeps an eye on the road.

“A man shot my mother in front of me,” Erik says, eventually. “He was trying to make me use my power, but I didn’t know how.”

There is some resistance, like Erik is trying not to think about it, but Charles can still see the German soldier with the gun to her head, and Erik is screaming, _screaming_. The gun goes off like thunder, like lightning hitting dry timber.

“Oh.” Charles’s voice is weak. He doesn’t want to see it, he doesn’t want to see any of it, but he can’t help it. There is nothing to keep the thoughts out.

“I’m sorry,” Erik says. There’s guilt there, and anger. There is, _shouldn’t have told him that_ and, _you stupid bastard keep your secrets hidden_.

“You can’t though.” Charles doesn’t mean for the words to come out the way that they do. He doesn’t really mean to say them at all. “I hear – nearly everything, and I don’t know how not to.”

Erik doesn’t say anything for a long time. It doesn’t matter, Charles can still hear every doubt, every nearly subsumed note of desire, every, _my god what will this world do to you?_ “You’ll learn,” he says, but Charles can tell that even Erik isn’t sure of that.

 

“Turn right,” Charles says. “Turn right here.”

He’s still not sure how he knows – some residue left over from the dead man in Guatemala, maybe, like a handprint on his mind – but Erik turns the car at his direction.

 _Are you sure about this, Charles?_ Raven sends to him, with ripples of worry and some frustration.

 _I’m rarely sure of anything,_ Charles sends back, and she turns around in her seat to smile at him. He thinks it’s a better thing to say than, _I’m not sure of anything at all_.

 

Charles tries not to ask Erik questions, because he’s half afraid that Erik won’t answer him, and half afraid that Erik will tell him to look inside if he wants to find out.

Charles couldn’t bear either, so he does his best to stay quiet.

 

The highway turns into a single lane road, and then to dirt. There is more greenery here, shading them from the sun. Charles looks out the windows and smells the air, the thick scent of pollen, the road dust kicked up by the tires. Sometimes Charles still wakes in the morning expecting only the smell of disinfectant and sweat, the harsh glow of the florescent lighting, the soft echoing footsteps of the orderlies. Anything else seems like a blessing, and not to be counted on.

He’s been wearing the same five shirts, the same two pairs of trousers, the same jumper with the hole in the hem every day since they left the house that Erik never owned. He’s worn and stained and threadbare, though his shoes still shine like new.

Charles doesn’t pay attention to time, but he can feel it ticking. Erik is getting restless. _shaw,_ he thinks, whenever he’s been driving for too many hours on half a night’s sleep. _I’m going to find you, I’m going to find you and I’m going to kill you._

Charles watches the trees pass over them, and he smells the pollen and dust, and tries to ignore the violence that Erik thinks of when he has nothing else to distract him.

 

In the shower, Charles puts tentative hands on his own body. It’s like a foreign object, some obscure piece of machinery that he only understands in concept and not in practice. They’re nearly into Venezuela, and the water pressure spits and sputters. Charles touches the hollow of his belly, slippery and pale underneath the spray. He presses the pads of both thumbs into the points of his hipbones where the skin pulls paper-thin. He can see the blue of his veins, branching off and trickling away.

Raven is humming under her breath in the other room, and Charles is trying to avoid thinking of Erik at all, but he still knows that Erik is trying not to think about Charles, slick and soaked underneath the spray. Charles brushes one thumb experimentally over his left nipple, and the feel of it makes his stomach shudder, unfamiliar. He understands the mechanics of pleasure in the abstract, but in practice his fingers rubbing over his ribs and down feels wrong, foolish. He wants, he _wants_ , but this isn’t what he wants. He watches the water swirl over his pale toes and toward the drain, and turns off the tap.

He pulls back on his clothes, his hair dripping on the cotton covering his shoulders. He can’t see his face in the fogged up mirror, but he doesn’t really want to, anyway.

 

It takes them nearly two more weeks to get all the way to Argentina. Charles speaks to no one but Raven and Erik, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hear things. Despite that most of the thoughts are in Spanish or Portuguese, the memories are just as vivid and colorful. Driving past towns leaves Charles weak and shaking, clutching at his head. They’re close to Córdoba when he has to force Erik to stop the car so that he can stumble outside to vomit, rather than soil the upholstery. He kneels in the dust, bent over and wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, Raven hovering somewhere near his elbow.

He can still hear them all, the teeming millions of them, screaming and fucking and dying, and it’s all Charles can do not to retch again.

“Sorry,” he says, and spits onto the dirt.

Erik touches his arm just above the elbow and tugs him to his feet, so gentle that it makes Charles feel even guiltier. “Come on,” Erik says, “you can’t stay here. We’re too close to the city.”

“I know, I –” Charles has to cut himself off and grit his teeth. “Ah, god.”

Erik wants to scoop him up and carry him off, and even the familiarity of Erik’s protectiveness and Raven’s fierce devotion aren’t enough to keep the city at bay.

It takes them half an hour to get far enough away that Charles can do anything but close his eyes and ride it out. Raven turns on the radio and sings along. Erik watches Charles in the rearview mirror. Charles tries to sleep.

 

The car is parked when Charles wakes again. He’s exhausted, and his hand shakes when he moves to push his hair out of his eyes. Raven and Erik are near, but something is wrong. Something is wrong, and it’s woken him.

The house, he realizes, after a moment. There are more people inside than expected, and – Charles gasps, as he feels a sharp _something_ go through his shoulder, Raven’s shoulder. He can feel the noise she makes, guttural and wounded, and Erik is livid but he can’t hold them all off. They have metal on them, yes, but his focus is too divided.

 _Erik!_ Charles calls, in surprise and desperation. Erik twitches, distracted, and Raven is bleeding, Charles can smell it. He wouldn’t make it to the house in time, not as drained and shaky as he is. He is yards away, half-nauseous and still trembling.

 _No,_ he thinks, and closes his eyes. All of them, all twelve men and Raven and Erik, all of them can hear him. _I won’t let you, they’re all I have_.

There is confusion, a _what in the hell is going_ , and, _another one not another of these freaks_ , and _shaw said the one but even the money isn’t worth_

Charles can hear them breathing, and he thinks, _shhh, be quiet, quiet_ , as gently as he knows how. They don’t want to listen, but he pushes inside them and he makes them. He can see everything each of them has done, each bullet, each bashed in head, each order carried out, and the nausea rises up in his throat. He squeezes them tighter, twelve of them too much to hold on to except that he’s so angry that he can’t think or breathe or speak.

 _You’ve done enough,_ he says to them. One of them tries to cover his ears, but Charles holds him motionless, in thrall. _Stop now, just stop. Stop_.

He feels them go out, one and a time, like broken light bulbs, as they struggle to draw breath against a force that they don’t understand. He hears them plead, he feels their fear, and one by one they die.

Somewhere, somewhere else, Erik is caught between concern and awe, while Raven is half out the door. Charles loses consciousness again before either of them make it to the car.

 

Everything is white, bright white like the hospital lights that Charles thought he’d left behind. He is stuck, slowly sinking into the floor while people without faces walk right by and don’t slow or stop or look his way. He doesn’t scream or try to move, but they keep talking, chattering to the open air. Charles is so tired. All he wants is quiet.

 

_Charles, come back. Please, Charles._

 

It’s cool when Charles wakes up. He pushes off the sheets and sits up, but he’s somewhere unfamiliar again. Hardwood floors with no carpet, a light sheet covering him, and the voices are dim, far away. It’s daylight, and the sunlight peeks in around the drawn curtains. It’s like the room he first woke up in, those months ago, but the angles are all wrong and it’s too quiet.

Charles waits for someone to notice that he’s awake, but no one does. He can’t help but wonder if he’s dreaming again. Eventually, he curls up on his side and goes back to sleep.

 

When he next awakens, it’s dark outside the curtains. There’s a lamp on in the far corner, and Erik is sitting in a chair by the bedside. Charles is struck with déjà vu so fierce that he grimaces. Erik sits up straight and leans forward.

“You stupid, stupid boy,” Erik says, his voice barely above a whisper. “You shouldn’t have done that.” _you shouldn’t have had to – Raven shouldn’t – my fault_ , he doesn’t say.

“They were going to kill you.” Charles sits up and pulls his knees up to his chest, legs crossed at the ankles. “Where – is Raven all right?”

“She’s fine. Minor stab wound, three stitches and she’s all set. Sleeping off the painkillers, downstairs.” Erik pauses, like he’s collecting himself, but he fails. His thoughts are whirring just as rapidly as they ever are. “You shouldn’t have – Charles, you were out for five days. We weren’t sure you were going to wake up.” There’s a spike of residual, remembered terror _– oh god so pale – what if he never – he has to he has to –_ strong enough to stick Charles’s breath in his throat. Erik swallows, and looks away. “I don’t want to go through that again. And Raven –” Erik cuts himself off. Charles understands, he can’t help but understand, but that doesn’t mean he would do anything differently, given the chance.

“It was the city that did it. Not the killing. It’s all the – hearing, the voices, they’re too loud and I can’t make them stop, but – I made them stop. I stopped all of them.” Charles laughs, a little, but it comes out twisted, like a hiccupped sob. He wonders how many people he could stop, just like that, how many he could manage at a time.

It had almost been quiet, for a few moments.

Erik touches Charles’ cheek, his fingers rough with callus, but gentle pressure. Charles leans in, presses his lips to the pulse point in Erik’s wrist. Erik jolts _– taking advantage always taking – he doesn’t want he can’t – picking up what I’m giving him –_ and Charles knows that he’s going to pull away before he does.

“Why won’t you let me?” Charles asks, though, of course, he knows the answer.

Erik searches his face for something, but he leaves before Charles knows if he’s found what he’s looking for.

 

Raven is groggy but awake when Charles ventures downstairs. Erik is far enough away that Charles has to actively try to hear him, and he’s tempted, but he stays out. Raven is propped up on the couch, a bowl of soup in her lap, and a book face down on the coffee table. She smiles when he comes in. She’s wearing a shirt, so he can’t see the bandage on her shoulder, but he can feel her hurt.

“You scared the shit out of me,” she says, and pushes a lock of red hair behind her ear. He knows that she is serious, but he is just happy that she is alive. “You don’t know what it was like to see you lying there, motionless.” She shakes her head. He can see it through her, but he doesn’t want to.

“I did it for you,” Charles says, and sits down, pulling her feet into his lap. Her pajama pants are a little too short, exposing her thin ankles. Her skin is soft and smooth and cool underneath his fingertips. “You and Erik both.”

“They didn’t even struggle.” She’s remembering how they’d just stopped breathing at all once. How they’d collapsed one at a time, lips turning bruise-purple, eyes rolling back. They hadn’t even blinked.

“They struggled,” Charles says. “I’m just stronger than they were.”

 

They head north, back the way that they came. Erik is closed off, his face stoic, his movements constrained. His thoughts are the opposite, roiling and wild, and Charles feels more like an intruder than ever. Mostly, Charles watches the hard angle of Erik’s jaw, the broad sweep of his hair back from his face. He waits for Erik to smile, sharp teeth and all, but it doesn’t happen.

Raven shifts into a dark-haired girl, innocent in her frock, to ask for directions and Erik slides his palm over the body of the car, almost possessive. Charles watches the way the metal ripples underneath his fingertips, and imagines, and has to turn away.

 

Charles only knows that it’s winter after they cross the border into the United States. He wonders if it has snowed yet at the big, old house his parents used to live in, but he doesn’t suppose that he’ll ever find out.

They’ve been in South Carolina for three weeks, in a shack just off the beach, when Erik starts to think about leaving. Charles knows he’s thinking about it, but he can’t believe that Erik would ever actually do it. He wouldn’t do that to them.

The wind blowing in off of the ocean smells like salt and sand, and leaves Charles’s hair stiff and coarse. He walks for hours at a time, until he can’t hear anyone at all, not without trying. When he reaches out with his mind there are glimmers – _can’t you – have to try – John said he wouldn’t – satin and lace trim_ – but he doesn’t try for very long. It’s almost a gift, to have the choice, and it won’t last forever.

Charles sits in the sand, socks stuffed into his untied shoes, which he has tucked by his left hip. The sound of the ocean crashing into the shore isn’t that something he remembers. He wonders if his parents ever took him to the beach when he was little. He wonders if he loved them, and if they loved him. His mother’s face is nothing more than a blurry picture – swollen eyes and red, red lips. His father he has no memory of at all.

Charles digs his toes into the ground. There is no one out there in this huge, monstrous world except for Raven and Erik. For Charles, anyway. No one else matters. No one else ever believed in him.

Charles sticks his thumb through one of the holes in his jumper, picks up his shoes, and starts back to the shack. The wind is wriggling through the threads in his jeans, brushing against his skin and leaving goosepimples behind. Charles does his best to push his hair away from his face, sticks his shoes underneath one arm, and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

He walks for half an hour before he can even see the shack again, far off down the beach. The sun is setting, and he’s close enough, now, to hear Raven and Erik without trying very hard. He listens in for half a minute before he realizes that they’re arguing. He stops walking.

_– she can’t Raven can’t know she won’t she’s too blinded by – he’s not listening to me you fucker take one look at me you know I’m not lying – it might be best for everyone for all of us for Charles if I just go – don’t you dare turn away from me Erik he can’t I won’t let him –_

Charles takes off running.

 

The door handle is half-melted and searing to the touch. Charles burns his hand getting it open, but he doesn’t let that stop him from shouldering the door open, hand cradled to his chest. Raven is standing with her hands curled into fists, her face a snarl of fury. Erik isn’t looking at her, he’s facing the window, but his shoulders are so tense that they look as if they’re about to shatter into pieces.

“You’re seriously considering going,” Charles says. His hand is throbbing, but he’s angry, too. Angry enough to ignore it.

Erik turns, and his mind is reaching out to Charles – _don’t make me – Charles, please don’t – you know what I –_ but Charles has been listening. He hadn’t thought – but that had been stupid, obviously. “I am,” Erik says. “It’s what’s best, Charles, you have to know that.”

“I know no such thing,” Charles says. His voice is almost peevish, high and thinly strung. “I didn’t think you’d actually do this to us.”

“Charles, you were nearly killed. I’ve always been better on my own, with no one to worry about. Raven is quite capable of taking care of you, and it isn’t as if – it isn’t as if you’re helpless yourself. I have to find Shaw.”

The terrible thing is that he means every word. If Charles thought he could talk Erik out of it, keep him from leaving, he would, but – Erik is the most stubborn of the three of them. He rarely wavers.

“I won’t stop you,” Charles says, “though I think – I think that I could, should I try. Just let me show you something, before you go.”

Charles tugs at Erik’s elbow with his unburned hand. Raven is still seething in the corner, her mind awash with betrayal and anger. Charles can’t push her away, and he doesn’t disagree, but he looks into Erik’s face, his pursed mouth, his clenched jaw, and knows that he has to try this thing anyway.

He reaches for Erik’s face, and the way that Erik flinches punches the air right out of his lungs. He pushes on, tucking his hand into the curve of Erik’s cheek, fingertips resting against his cheekbone, thumb less than half an inch from the corner of Erik’s mouth. Slowly, he brings up his other hand, the throbbing one, blisters already rising on his palm, and cups Erik’s other cheek.

 _Listen to me,_ he says, and opens himself up, holds himself open, and pulls Erik in to look. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know if it will work. He only knows that he must try to make Erik understand, or he’ll leave and he’ll never come back.

He tugs Erik past the whispers of the ward – _time to take your pills – shh, shh, it’ll all be quiet soon –_ to the house with the drawn white curtains and the overgrown backyard where Raven and Erik had touched him with such patience.

 _You are the only two things in this world that mean anything to me,_ Charles says, as brutally honest as he can find the courage to be. _There is nothing else for me but the two of you, and if you leave, there will only be Raven._

Charles wants to show Erik the way that he sees him, the strength in him, the quick sharpness of his smile, the casual way he touches. The calluses on his hands, the slick of his hair. Charles nudges Erik until he can see Charles’s _want,_ the desire that Charles has no idea what to do with.

 _No,_ Erik says, for the first time, _you can’t._

 _I can,_ Charles argues, with the certainty of truth. _I do_.

And he lets Erik go.

 

Charles pulls his hands back and Erik wipes at his eyes. Raven is curious and angry and desperately sad, but she’s patient, too. She is better than either of them.

“Go to San Diego,” Charles says, his voice hoarse. “The man there isn’t the one that you want, I don’t think, but he organized Argentina. And he’ll know who you’re looking for.”

Charles kisses Erik on the mouth, a harsh press of lips, standing on his tiptoes. Erik swipes one thumb over Charles’s left cheekbone, and nods, and leaves.

“Charles?” Raven asks, – _I can’t believe he would – how could he –_ , and she pulls him into a hug before he knows that she’s even moved.

“I think I’d like to stay here for a little while,” he says, vaguely. “I like the smell of the ocean.”

“We can stay as long as you like,” Raven says. Charles keeps reaching out for Erik, until he’s too far away to sense anymore.

 

Raven pulls out the chess set the first week after Erik leaves. Charles had almost forgotten that she had it. They play at least once a day, and they walk, and Charles watches the ocean. Charles’s burned hand heals slowly, but it does heal. Raven’s shoulder is mending much faster, but that’s not a surprise. Raven practices new shapes – an elderly man, a child, a matronly schoolteacher. Charles is never fooled, not even when he returns from a walk to find her treading toward him across the sand. She can change her appearance, but she sounds the same to him.

“You’ve stopped thinking about him,” Charles says. The nights are getting colder, and the wind coming in off the water numbs his cheeks.

“Who?” Raven asks. She’s beat him at chess four days running, but she still hasn’t gloated. Now she’s wearing her own skin, out in public. Charles knows that she puts on the blond girl garb to disguise herself, but he doesn’t think she should have to.

“Me,” Charles says. “The me from before.”

Raven nods, still looking out over the ocean. _He still doesn’t get it,_ she thinks, but Charles doesn’t trace the thought back. He’s not sure he wants to. “I’m not waiting for you to remember,” she says, and lifts one shoulder in half a shrug. “I’m not holding out for some mythical, perfect, undamaged Charles to rise from the ashes. I love you.”

“But I’m –” he start, and shakes his head. “I’m broken, and crazy, and probably won’t ever be anything else. Don’t you miss him?” He’ll most likely never set foot in a city again. He knows so many things that he shouldn’t, and he can’t even stop himself. He’s killed men with only the power of his mind, and he would do it again in a heartbeat, should Raven or Erik need him to.

“No, I don’t. I don’t have to. You’re right here, Charles. You’re him, you’re my best friend, and my brother. You may not want that, but you have it.”

“Thank you,” Charles says, after a long, silent moment, and tries not to decode the love that she’s sending out, tries not to break it down into hopes and realities and disappointments.

“Let’s go inside,” she says, and wraps an arm around his waist. “It’s getting cold, and you’re starting to shiver.”

Charles leans his head on her shoulder and doesn’t say anything.

 

It’s two weeks later that Charles finally stops searching for Erik with his mind. He hasn’t heard Erik since he first left Charles’s farthest range that first day, but it hasn’t stopped him trying.

He won’t think about whether or not Erik is coming back. It won’t do him any good to worry. Still, they’ve been living on this beach for long enough that people are starting to recognize them at the small grocer’s in town and at the newsstand. It’s not enough to panic Raven, yet, but Charles can feel her unease.

Charles beats her at chess three days in a row, and then she thoroughly trounces him.

“Do you ever wish you were different?”

Charles is sitting on the bed, examining the wreckage of their game.

“What do you mean?” Raven asks, leaning back against the headboard.

“You know what I mean,” Charles says, and she does.

“Sometimes,” she says, with a shrug. “But then I wouldn’t be special. And I _like_ being special.” _not like you, Charles, and not like Erik. I’ve never been poked at and prodded until I broke,_ she sends him, and Charles only knows that it is purposeful by the clear focus of it, the way each word follows the next instead of flitting past, one association and then another. He doesn’t know why she decides not to say it aloud.

 _Different,_ he sends. _The two things are quite different. Someone wanted something of Erik. The doctors wanted to cure me._

“And I can’t figure out which is worse,” Raven says with an unhappy frown. The truth is, Charles doesn’t know either.

 

Charles goes for a swim two days later. He can’t say what makes him do it; he rarely knows his owns thoughts with the clarity that he knows others’. He doesn’t have a swimming costume, so he strips down to his boxer shorts and wades in, leaving his trousers, jumper, and t-shirt in a neatly folded pile on top of his shoes. Winter isn’t quite finished, though the fiercest of the cold is long gone. The chill in the water still takes his breath away.

Charles is somewhere off shore when Erik comes back in range. He sputters and flails, startled by the _– might have left even if they haven’t – not sure how – what if they –_ of Erik’s thoughts, fragmented by the distance though they are. He treads water, listening in without regret, unabashed in his relief.

 

Charles is shivering by the time he makes it back to shore, dripping seawater onto the sun-warmed sand. He gathers his clothes to his chest, and starts off down the beach.

Erik is knocking on the door to the shack. Raven has seen him coming out the window, but she still lets him in.

 

“– I won’t,” Erik is saying as Charles opens the door. Raven has her arms crossed over her chest, but it’s defensive, not aggressive. Erik’s eyes are red, and he has a bruise swelling over his left cheekbone. He is unthinkably tired and startlingly vulnerable, and Charles can’t look away. Erik feels so deeply that it cuts through Charles like a sharp wind, and he has to catch his breath. Charles could find out what they were talking about, but he doesn’t. He knows enough. He knows too much already.

Erik cuts himself off when Charles comes inside, his eyes tracking across Charles’s bare chest, his wet underwear, the sand stuck in a spray across both feet.

 _I am so – wrong for you – how could anyone ever really –_ Erik is thinking, a rush, half-formed thoughts sliding into one another and colliding.

“Erik,” Charles says, and tries to ignore the pleading in his voice. “Erik, please.”

There’s blood dried underneath Erik’s fingernails, a dusty brown, and he runs his hands through his hair, saying nothing.

Raven looks between them and her mouth twists up into something close to a grimace. She looks her age, for once, and it startles Charles to remember that she’s younger than he is – she can’t be much older than sixteen. She has given up so much for him.

“I can’t be here for this,” she says, shaking her head. “And it won’t help for me to be. I’ll be back in half an hour. If you run off again, Erik, I’m not going to forgive you so easily.”

She closes the door behind her, leaving Charles alone with Erik. Neither of them say anything for a long moment, though for Charles it isn’t precisely silence. It rarely is. He can still hear Erik’s thoughts, as clear and loud as Erik always is – _his eyes I can’t look away from – why did I come back here? – those lips he’s frustrated and I want –_

Charles won’t be the one to speak first, this time. He’s shown Erik everything that he has, and Erik has come back, but not even Erik truly knows why. Charles can see Erik’s jaw clench and unclench, and his hands are in his pockets, faux-casual.

“I’m not good at this, Charles,” Erik says, and Charles’s eyes snap away from the shadow of stubble along Erik’s chin, and the way his cheekbone is watercolor painted, blue and green and yellow, with bruise. “I’ve never had the time, I’m – I don’t know what you expected.”

“Did you find who you were looking for?” Charles’s voice is steady, but Charles himself isn’t. He takes a step forward and then stops himself.

“No,” Erik says. _Yes_ , he thinks. Both are true.

“Stay,” Charles says. _Kiss me,_ he thinks. He’s not sure if Erik hears him. “I can help you.”

Charles would kill all of them for Erik. He’d kill all of them.

“You feel them die, Charles. I can’t imagine what that must be like.” Erik’s hands are fisted in his pockets.

“I could show you,” Charles says, though he knows that Erik won’t want to know. Not really.

Erik is thinking, _how could I ever think – I’ve fucked him up more than when – he’s so young and –_ but he’s also thinking about pressing Charles into the wall and biting into his mouth until he whimpers, shoving a hand down the front of his trousers and getting him off before Raven gets back. Charles has had enough.

“Erik,” he says, “I’m not stupid. I’m eighteen, and I’m crazy, and I’m certainly never going to be normal, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want. You want me, I know you do, so please – please.” _I want,_ he thinks, and pushes it toward Erik, tries to make him hear, make him understand.

Erik makes a noise like he’s been wounded somewhere necessary, a noise Charles has never heard from him, and his hands come up to frame Charles’s face, thumbs rubbing just over his cheekbones. Charles shudders; he couldn’t pull away even if he wanted to, and it’s all he can do not to push into Erik’s hands like a cat. “You,” Erik starts, and then changes tack. “I think that you can’t know what you do to me, that you can’t understand, but you do. You know everything I think about, each one of my nightmares. And it’s not even on purpose.”

“Erik,” Charles starts, to explain, to apologize, but then Erik leans in and kisses him. It’s almost an attack, Erik holding Charles’s face while he kisses and kisses him, teeth digging into Charles’s lower lip. Charles hears the muffled noises that he makes, tastes copper when Erik bites down too hard, listens to the _his mouth I’ve thought about this it’s not nearly enough_ that is speeding through Erik’s head, incoherent and messy. Charles closes his eyes.

It’s nothing like he imagined it would be; not soft, not careful, and the taste of blood is his own, not some nameless man worthy of Erik’s hate. But Erik’s fingers press up Charles’s spine, and he’s making Charles arch his back, reach up toward him, trying to even their heights.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Erik says, and he’s telling the truth, but his thumb is pressing into Charles’s lower lip, swiping across the skin. Charles would guess that his lips are red from kissing, swollen with it. Erik’s finger comes away reddish-pink with Charles’s blood and saliva.

“I only wish to help you,” Charles says, holding himself still and tense. He’s afraid that if he moves, Erik will come to his senses and remember all the reasons he has for keeping a barrier between them.

“You shouldn’t want to,” Erik says, licking the blood from his thumb.

Charles gathers his courage and presses his palm over Erik’s heart, beating beneath his shirt and skin and ribs. “But I do.”

 

Raven is sitting on the beach, watching the waves crash onto shore, drawing abstract patterns in the sand when Charles goes to her. She’s thinking about how good Erik could be for Charles, and how bad. She’s thinking, _if he goes again he’s not ever coming back I won’t let him not after everything that Charles not after all that we’ve been through,_ and Charles sits next to her without talking.

“I’m not as forgiving as you are,” she says, after a long moment. Her long, blue toes, toenails painted in delicate gold, are buried in the sand. She has her knees pulled up and one arm wrapped underneath them. Her hair is loose and blowing in the breeze, the sunlight glinting red.

“I’m not that forgiving, either,” Charles admits. “Only for you, and for him.”

“I know,” she says, and then, after a moment, her voice choked. “Don’t let him fuck everything up.”

If Charles knew how to speak about it, he’d tell her how he’s wanted Erik from the moment he saw Erik’s face in her mind, before he knew that such a thing was possible, before he knew what wanting was. He remembers so little, just the rain hitting the car window, and the pills all lined up in their little paper cups, and the orderlies pitying smiles, and the involuntary clutch of his fingers in the sheets as the electricity ran through him, but he doesn’t want to remember any more than that.

“I’ll try,” he says, instead, and leans his head on her shoulder.

 

Erik is asleep when Charles climbs into the bed next to him. He’s deep enough that he barely stirs, even when Charles’s foot nudges his, and Charles can hear none of his dreams.

“Kiss me again,” he whispers, over the sound of Raven brushing her teeth in the bathroom. “Kiss me when you wake up.”

Erik doesn’t hear him, and Charles wouldn’t try to make him, but he hopes that Erik will somehow know anyway.

 

Charles is sad to see the shack go, shrinking in the rearview mirror, but he’d rather that than be left behind again. Raven has her feet up on the dashboard, barefoot, and Charles is stretched out in the backseat.

“Where are we going?” Erik asks, and _– don’t know where he is but I have to find him Charles I have to –_ Charles doesn’t know yet. He doesn’t know, except that Erik does. Erik got the information in San Diego. Erik is still letting Charles choose.

“West,” he says. “We’re going to Arizona.”

Erik smiles, sharp and sudden, in the rearview. Raven reaches back for Charles’s hand, and Charles takes it. Charles watches the dust settle on the road behind them, and then closes his eyes.

 _Later_ , Erik’s mind whispers to him. _Later I’m going to kiss you until you can’t breathe, until you’re arching up, helplessly, into me_. Charles gets a flash, Erik climbing over the front seat and pressing Charles down into the leather, long, blunt fingers winding into Charles’s hair. It’s a promise. Charles smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> the final scene has now been wonderfully, beautifully illustrated [here](http://pics.livejournal.com/crow821/pic/000b66tw/), by [crow821](http://crow821.livejournal.com). SO GORGEOUS.


End file.
